"Force Majeure" ("Turist"): review

the moment your daddy (blue coat) abandons you

[WARNING: "majeure" spoilers.]

Directed by Ruben Östlund, 2014's "Force Majeure" (original Swedish title: "Turist") is a dark comedy about a relationship that breaks down, and what happens next. The movie is set in the French Alps but focuses on a Norwegian-Swedish family on vacation. Dialogue is mostly in Swedish, with some lines in English and French. Most of the dialogue is subtitled. It stars Johannes Bah Kuhnke as Tomas, the father/husband; Lisa Loven Kongsli as Ebba, the mother/wife; Clara Wettergren as Vera, the elder daughter; Vincent Wettergren as Harry, the younger son; Kristofer Hivju as Mats, best friend of Tomas; and Fanni Metelius as Fanny, the young girlfriend of Mats. This is the first of three Ruben Östlund films that I will be reviewing. Östlund's name kept popping up as I was randomly making my way through Apple TV's selections; his subsequent films after "Force Majeure" are "The Square" and "Triangle of Sadness," all of which I'll be reviewing over the next few days.

The story begins with a family on vacation in the French Alps. The father, Tomas, is Swedish; the mother, Ebba, is Norwegian. The film is divided into parts, so we see title cards like "Ski Day One," "Ski Day Two," and so on. Ski Day One establishes that this seems to be a more or less normal family. On Ski Day Two, however, something occurs that affects the rest of the film: as the family is dining outdoors at a rooftop restaurant, a controlled avalanche happens near them, and as the avalanche slides down the mountainside, a snowy cloud begins to billow up, making it seem as if the avalanche is about to swamp the balcony. Many of the diners are initially fascinated, but as the snow cloud starts to dominate the view, people panic. Tomas, at first, feels sure the workers controlling the avalanche know what they're doing, but as more and more diners panic around him, he too freaks out—to the point where he swings away from the avalanche, grabs some of his equipment, and flees in screaming terror, abandoning his wife and children in the process. The avalanche turns out to be nothing: the snow cloud was, in fact, harmless, and the actual avalanche stopped well short of the dining area, as it was supposed to. Still, as far as wife Ebba is concerned, the damage has been done: in her eyes, her husband is now a selfish, puny coward, his true character having been revealed in a moment of crisis. Ebba had remained to shield her children as best she could, and Tomas was nowhere to be found.

This incident taints the rest of the family's vacation. When the two parents are having dinner with new acquaintances, Ebba relates, in English, what happened, but Tomas, mortified, denies that he cut and ran. Ebba is, unsurprisingly, disturbed by this denial, although you can see the gears working inside Tomas's head: he's quite obviously ashamed of his own cowardice, but male pride pushes him to deny that Ebba's "version" of events is the correct one. Tomas claims to remember the incident differently. As tensions rise between Tomas and Ebba, their children, Vera and Harry, start to think their parents might get a divorce. (Strangely, the kids also don't seem to remember that their father abandoned them; their main fear is that their parents might separate. Considering how young both kids are, I suppose this reaction is appropriate.) Later on, Tomas's friend Mats appears at the ski lodge (which, by the way, is enormous and well decked out) with his young girlfriend Fanny. (Mats is played by Kristofer Hivju, whom Americans know as the often-hilarious Tormund Giantsbane from "Game of Thrones," the Wildling who falls in love/lust with the giant Brienne of Tarth.) As Mats, Fanny, Tomas, and Ebba sit together at dinner, Ebba, unable to hold her stress in any longer, retells the story of her husband's abandonment. Mats gently and tentatively tries to rationalize Tomas's actions, saying that we can never know our first reaction to a sudden crisis, and maybe it wasn't so bad: after all, in an airplane, we're told to mask ourselves first before masking our children next in the event of cabin depressurization. Tomas stays silent, neither confirming nor denying Mats's attempt to get inside his head. Ebba, meanwhile, argues that saving the children was her first instinct as a mother; she's disappointed that her husband lacked the same instinct in the moment of crisis.

The rest of the movie deals with how all of this affects the remainder of the trip. Mats and Fanny end up getting into an argument later on when Fanny muses that Mats, being so similar to Tomas, would probably abandon her, too, should a crisis arise. This hypothetical, which Mats sees as a slight against his character that basically comes from nowhere, keeps Mats up all night. Because he has an ex-wife and children, Mats declares he'd take care of them and protect them with no hesitation. Fanny shoots back that he's currently at a ski lodge with a 20-year-old girl (Fanny herself), not with his wife and kids, who are far away. This only incenses Mats further, and the exchange ends inconclusively, but with Mats in a huff. At the end of the trip, though, two more incidents happen, one that tests Tomas again, and one that tests Mats. Tomas takes his family up a high slope, and when they reach the top, Ebba asks whether the low visibility might be a problem. Tomas says he'll go down first and check, then the kids will ski down, and finally Ebba will bring up the rear. This strategy works for a while, but the visibility worsens, and Ebba suddenly disappears. Tomas tells the kids to stay where they are; he removes his skis and charges back up the hill, following the sound of Ebba's cries for help. Eventually, he finds her, and perhaps feeling he has redeemed himself from his earlier cowardice, Tomas leads the family back down the slope to safety. Everyone boards the bus taking guests away from the ski lodge, but the bus driver proves clumsy at negotiating the tightly switchbacking mountain road. With one side of the road having a perilous drop, the bus passengers becoming increasingly tense as the bus lurches in illogical ways thanks to the driver's incompetent handling. Ebba finally says she wants to get off the fucking bus, and the driver gives up, opens the door, and lets the passengers out. Mats, meanwhile, finds it in himself to keep the frightened passengers calm, and declaring "women and children first," he supervises the orderly exit of the passengers from the bus. One passenger remains on the bus, which finally gets around the curve where it got stuck, and the rest of the passengers, stranded on a cold and high mountain road, now have no idea what to do. They decide to keep walking downhill, with Fanny walking far away from Mats, but with Ebba, Tomas, and the kids walking more or less together as a family. Mats holds Vera. And that's where the movie ends, with the fates of our passengers uncertain.

This was my first experience of the supposedly comedic stylings of director Ruben Östlund. I can't say that "Force Majeure" was ha-ha funny; it was slow and plodding, with some scenes dragging on and on way past the moment when most American viewers would sense that it's time to change the scene to something else. While Tomas gets a comical scene in which his crying jag goes on for far too long (a moment that becomes funnier, in a Tom Green* kind of way, the longer it lasts), most of the film's comedy is not nearly so obvious. I did wonder, at several moments, whether there were cultural aspects of the story that I was missing because I know little of Swedish culture and the Swedish sense of humor. I might have to read some Swedish reviews of the film to find out what I've missed.

I can say it was a relief to have kids who acted like real kids for once. Hollywood usually has a tendency to write kids who are obnoxiously precocious and possessed of adult wisdom far beyond their years. Anyone who's dealt with real kids knows from up-close experience that most kids are selfish, snotty, short-sighted, and stupid, and that this immaturity continues well into the teens. Sure, there are moments of angelic sweetness even among the worst monsters, but you generally don't look to kids for enlightened wisdom. Then again, kids can give some brutally frank answers to certain questions, but that's only because children, especially when very young, haven't developed a filter that will make them answer politely. Clara Wettergren as Vera and Vincent Wettergren as Harry (apparently siblings) both do a great job of just being kids. They were as engaging and believable as the adult cast.

Tomas's crying jag comes at a quiet moment when he's had a chance to think about what a cowardly shit he's been. Through fake tears that become real (a fine piece of acting by Johannes Bah Kuhnke), Tomas confesses to Ebba that he doesn't like the man he seems to be, and in the midst of this confession, he mentions that he's won at games with his children by cheating, and he's been unfaithful to Ebba. Ebba's lack of shock at that last bit shows that she and Tomas have probably hashed out this particular problem before, and the movie makes nothing more of it.

My theory is that, at the end of the film, Ebba deliberately gets herself lost to give Tomas a chance to redeem himself by rescuing her. Ebba's no dummy. She sacrifices a bit of her dignity, and a lot of her resentment, in order to give back to Tomas a measure of his lost masculine pride. On some level, she may understand that her marriage to Tomas can never heal if Tomas never stops feeling shame. Why does she make this sacrifice? As just mentioned, she may want to heal her marriage, but there's also a good chance that she's still thinking of the children, who have been so concerned about parental harmony. By the end of the film, even after the bus incident, Tomas is a happier, more confident man. It's interesting to note the contrast with Mats, who also does a brave thing by getting the passengers out of the bus in an orderly manner, but his girlfriend Fanny—who comes off as superficial and unnecessarily provocative—doesn't seem to give him any credit for this; instead she chooses to walk separately from him as all the abandoned ski-lodge guests head downhill together.

So I'm of several minds about this film. It has many positives. The fact that I've already written so many column-inches about it indicates that the film is deep and has layers. If it really is a comedy (I think it's more of a dramedy), it's a smart one because its a pretty ruthless character study. Director Östlund doesn't flinch away from awkwardness at all, and I'm again reminded of the drag-it-out-as-long-as-you-can comedy of Tom Green. Much of the movie is from Ebba's beleaguered point of view. Finding out that your husband is a cowardly piece of shit can't be pleasant or reassuring. And whether Tomas's redemption moment at the end was engineered by Ebba or not, it must have felt good to realize that Tomas, for all his stupid faults, was not essentially a bad person. I also appreciated the film's little aside into the issue of open marriages (Ebba meets a fellow Swedish woman who is married but sleeps with a series of men): Ebba wants to believe that the best ideal is one of monogamous commitment even as she's struggling with her loss of faith in her husband. And I appreciate that the film gives us at least one moment of broad comedy: there's a scene in which Tomas and Mats, having just enjoyed a good session of skiing, are sitting on camp chairs by an outdoor bar. As they sip their brews, a woman approaches and tells Tomas that her friend thinks Tomas is the best-looking guy at the bar. Tomas gets a moment to bask in the admiration of a woman he doesn't know, but the same lady reappears a minute later and apologetically says that her friend had actually been pointing at another guy. You can almost hear a balloon deflating as Tomas receives this bit of news, but in the end, he and Mats have a good laugh about the incident. Lastly, hats off to Lisa Loven Kongsli as Ebba for carrying so many of the film's important moments. She radiates many emotions and gives her Ebba a lot of depth.

At the same time, the film does drag. There's no denying this. I expect my comedies to be bright and happy (or comically dark), and I want the story to move along at a fast clip. "Force Majeure" takes its sweet time both with the overall plot and with each scenario the characters find themselves in. I can't fault the acting, nor can I fault the cinematography, which is gorgeous even if it relies too much on cutting back and forth between grandiose alpine scenery and intimate midrange/closeup shots inside the ski-lodge hotel area. The problem lies in the editing, which controls the film's pacing. If Ruben Östlund does this in his next two films, then this little three-film Östlund marathon is going to be a slog.

Overall, I'd prefer to treat "Force Majeure" as either a dramedy or as an outright drama. Viewed that way, it makes a lot more sense to me: it's a drama with occasional comic moments that break the tension. I think it's an excellent, character-driven story that makes you think about the motives and mindset of the people we're watching, and I do appreciate the director's unflinching way of approaching awkwardness: I often squirmed uncomfortably as I watched the story unfold, with Tomas lamely trying to preserve his dignity while denying that he'd been a coward. And while the film ends inconclusively regarding the collective fate of the ski-lodge guests making their way along a cold alpine road, we get some pretty firm, clear conclusions about Tomas's and Mats's respective relationships: Tomas is out of the doghouse and back with his family, but Mats finds himself on shaky ground with Fanny (although, frankly, I found Fanny's character to be annoyingly badgering).

So I would give "Force Majeure," overall, a sincere thumbs-up despite its flaws, some of which, I admit, may come from my not understanding Swedish humor.

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*For those unfamiliar with Tom Green's comedy, he's known for putting himself or others into awkward situations, then dragging out those situations so that you're eventually laughing at the fact that the situation has been so dragged out. It's a type of comedy that borders on being a social experiment: how long will people continue to laugh as a scenario crawls slowly on? I like Tom Green when I'm in a certain mood, but I can absolutely relate to people who find his style intolerable. He's an acquired taste and not for everybody.