FORCE MAJEURE is a short film that somehow ended up a feature. The idea is good: a Swedish family go on an Alpine skiing holiday and one day, at lunch, they look like they are about to be hit by an avalanche. At the moment of crisis the father of the family flees, abandoning his wife and children. The avalanche stops, the family are safe, and the questions begin. Soon various friends and the kids are drawn in, as the family begins to disintegrate. The problem is that there just isn't enough meat on this bone; the conversations are forced, repetitive and lack depth. Worse still, it's hard to care about these people; it has that peculiarly Scandi coldness, where there are no close-ups, where the characters are eternally uptight, and where the closest we get to humanity is to watch the actors urinating or brushing their teeth. To bulk this out there are lots of lovely shots of the ski slopes. Like many Scandi films there is a slightly hysterical bleakness to all this. The ending is not open, so much as pointless. As a short film this would have been excellent, at two hours it's tedious.
Review of Force Majeure
