Force Majeure

Ruben Östlund's Force Majeure (Turist) won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at Cannes 2014 and the European Film Award for Best Film, and was Sweden's official Oscar submission for Best Foreign Language Film. The film consolidated Östlund, after his earlier Play (2011) and Involuntary (2008), as one of the most internationally significant Swedish auteurs of his generation; he would go on to win two consecutive Palme d'Or with The Square (2017) and Triangle of Sadness (2022).

On the second day of a French Alps ski holiday at Les Arcs, a controlled avalanche thunders towards the terrace of a luxury resort. Every adult at the breakfast table freezes, except the father, Tomas (Johannes Bah Kuhnke), who instinctively grabs his phone and runs, leaving his wife Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) and their two young children behind. The avalanche dissipates harmlessly. But the rest of the holiday is an excruciating accounting for what Tomas did in those few seconds.

Östlund's commitment to long static framings, theatrically blocked dinner-table conversations, and an almost-clinical distance from his subjects produced one of the most distinctively uncomfortable European-cinema registers of the 2010s. Frederik Wenzel's photography of the Les Arcs slopes and resort interiors, the use of Vivaldi's Summer as the recurring musical motif, and the central performances combine into a film that has been compared to The Vanishing and Festen in its sustained discomfort. The 2020 American remake (Downhill) was respectable; the original is irreplaceable.