A deconstruction of masculinity against a background of snowy Alpine landscapes.
Winner of the Un Certain Regard Prize at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.
Thomas and Ebba and their two children are taking a long-awaited holiday in a ski resort in the French Alps. During lunch in the restaurant there is an avalanche. Ebba grabs the children and Thomas grabs his phone and runs away in panic. It turns out that there was no danger, and the family has to come to terms with the husband’s egotistical action.
Ruben Östlund’s ascent to festival Olympia began with Force Majeure. Now the Swedish director, who has twice been awarded the Palme d’Or at Cannes, is considered contemporary Europe’s main satirist. Force Majeure, like his best-known films The Square and Triangle of Sadness, pokes fun at the morals of successful and egocentric middle-class people, but with less irony and no Bergmanesque motifs. The crisis of masculinity, internal helplessness, and self-pity hidden behind a mask of self-confidence are themes that have interested all of the key directors of the twentieth century. Östlund places this issue within the context of contemporary consumer culture and its system of values, in which explicit masculinity and crude demonstrations of force are not publicly acceptable. However, the question of traditional gender roles has not yet been completely answered. The director takes a caustic look at the various mutations and fluctuations in this field, showing the relationship between the sexes as the fragile balance of a mutual game of giveaway checkers.
Force Majeure
Director Ruben Östlund
Sweden, 2014, 120 min. 12+