Force Majeure | Film review - When holiday hell freezes over

Force Majeure Johannes Bah Kuhnke Lisa Loven Kongsli

When holiday hell freezes over

Stylishly unsettling, thought-provoking Swedish drama Force Majeure will have you debating its characters’ behaviour as soon as the credits roll. Model-perfect couple Tomas (Johannes Bah Kuhnke) and Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) are on a skiing holiday in the French Alps with their two young children when an avalanche suddenly threatens the family. But it is the couple’s marriage that is put in peril by Tomas’s panicky reaction to the apparent disaster.

Director Ruben Östlund sticks the knife into the Alpha male ego as the couple wrangle over what happened, accompanying the talk with some darkly funny moments. Östlund’s Palme d’Or-winning new film The Square, an offbeat satire on the art world starring Elisabeth Moss and Dominic West, opens in UK cinemas later this month.

Certificate 15. Runtime 119 mins. Director Ruben Östlund

Force Majeure shows on Film 4 at 11.10pm on Tuesday 1 August.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjjzVbTBF8o

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A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.