Force Majeure

“An ice-cold knockout. Brilliantly perceptive and frostily funny.”—Aaron Hillis, Village Voice

A critical favorite at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it took the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize, this wickedly funny and precisely observed psychodrama tells the story of a model Swedish family on a skiing holiday in the Swiss Alps. The sun is shining and the slopes are spectacular but, during a lunch at a mountainside restaurant, an avalanche suddenly bears down on the happy diners. With people fleeing in all directions and his wife and children in a state of panic, the husband makes a decision that will shake his marriage to its core and leave him struggling to reclaim his role as the family patriarch. Force Majeure announces Swedish director Ruben Östlund as one of the finest peers of Michael Haneke by offering a sophisticated and clever film full of psychological and physical tension. (118 mins., DCP)