‘Force Majeure’ Review: Chilly Passive Aggression

'Force Majeure'

Movie Rating:

3.5

‘Force Majeure’ can feel almost unbearably tense to watch. This is not because it’s suspenseful or frightening in any genre movie sense, more the result of writer/director Ruben Ostlund capturing the impossibly awkward feeling of being in a fraught family about to explode. The film will make anyone who has been even remotely close to this sort of behavior feel sick to his or her stomach.

Ostlund’s tale is about a wealthy Swedish family on a seemingly idyllic ski trip to the Swiss Alps. In the opening scenes, they go through the motions of a perfect family vacation with an almost detached sense of enjoyment. Then an unfortunate lunch spoils everything. The high-end resort uses controlled avalanches to ensure that the snowfall is never less than perfect, but one goes slightly wrong. As Tomas (Johannes Bah Kuhnke), Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongli) and their children enjoy a meal at an outdoor café, an avalanche tumbles towards them which seems larger than usual. In fact, it blasts right into the café and, without giving too much away, Tomas doesn’t exactly behave the way that his wife might have imagined. A rift forms between them immediately and that scab is picked over a few agonizingly passive-aggressive days. Then a second couple stumbles into this pressure cooker when they’re involuntarily invited to join the ongoing feud. From there, the awkwardness only expands.

Ostlund’s marital grudge matches play out so uncomfortably real that the film would be painful to watch were it not for the fact that the director has mercifully turned his story into a comedy. Far from broad slapstick, it’s the type of commentary that pulls laughs of recognition out of viewers who know this private pain oh too well. Within the parade of social discomfort, Ostlund gently pokes fun at gender roles and expectations. Tricky moral quandaries are raised, such as whether or not involuntary, instinctual action is a sign of true character. Thankfully, the film isn’t merely an exercise in symbolic navel gazing (aside from the final two painfully heavy-handed concluding scenes that feel more like thesis statements that narrative closure). Yet, despite all of the director’s high-minded pretensions about his subject matter, his goal is to play the material as painfully true rather than tediously representational.

The central performances from Kuhnke and Kongli are masterfully controlled. Their pain is so real and yet the drama so small that you’ll feel like you’re eavesdropping on the moment a marriage falls apart and shouldn’t be privileged to such private conversations. Ostlund delicately employs a visual style that emphasizes the couple’s emotional distance through compositional separation without drawing too much attention to itself. For the most part, the film focuses on the reality while subtly heightening all of the themes in ways that feel almost subliminal, but make a devastating impact.

Sure, the movie springs from an overly familiar genre of European art films dedicated to glibly pissing on the perfection of a hollow upper class existence, but at least Ostlund’s take on the worn-down material feels genuine and plays as painfully funny rather that pretentiously dour. ‘Force Majeure’ requires great patience and a high tolerance for cringing, but rewards viewers with insights and observations about the ugly realities of married life that almost hurt as much to watch as they would to experience.

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