FORCE MAJEURE written and directed by Ruben Ostlund, with Johannes Kuhnke, Lisa Loven Kongsli, Clara Wettergren and Vincent Wettergren. A filmswelike release. 118 minutes. Some subtitles. Opens Friday (October 31). For venues and times, see Movies.
Ruben Ostlund’s Force Majeure is being described as a domestic drama, a character study and a social comedy. All of those things are true, more or less: the film, in which a Swedish family’s bourgeois happiness is shattered during a skiing vacation in the French Alps, is funny and excoriating in equal measure.
In a little room underneath his distributor’s office, Ostlund, who shot ski films in his early 20s, tells me the whole thing started because he was looking for an excuse to go back to the slopes. And then he happened on a YouTube clip.
“It was a group of tourists sitting in an outdoor restaurant [who] saw an avalanche on a distant mountain peak,” he says. “And what I was interested in was the three seconds when the crowd goes from joyful to nervous laughter and then to total panic. Only the snow [mist] reached the restaurant, but people were panicking. And they had to deal with their embarrassment after, when they were walking back to the tables.
“I had the idea of having a family go on a ski vacation and experience this. I told a friend of mine who is an actor, and the next day he came back and said, What if only the father runs away?’ And immediately I understood: here is something we can build a feature film around.
“I started to ask myself questions about gender and the roles we play – how to be a father and a man. It just opened up a lot of questions, and everything fell into place.”
Force Majeure sets its psychological treatise against the gorgeous backdrop of a ski resort in the French Alps. Did it feel strange to stage something this intense in a place where people are supposed to be having the time of their lives?
“Yeah, well,” he says with a smile. “The only happy image of a vacation is in the travel agency’s commercials.”
Interview Clips
Ruben Ostlund on the roots of the project:
Ostlund on cultural myths about masculine heroism:
Ostlund on the lie of vacations:
normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner
