Glasgow Film Festival 2015: Force Majeure
A Swedish family are on a ski holiday in the French Alps. Everything seems to be going great for Tomas (Kuhnke), Ebba (Kongsli) and their two kids. That is, until one fateful day when an avalanche strikes during lunch. The mountainside restaurant seems to be right in its path, and everyone around them is screaming at the terror about to unfold. Except, as his previous film (tricksy race relations drama Play) proved, things in writer-director Ruben Östlund's films never go down the route you might presume.
The exact nature of how the avalanche aftermath unfolds will remain unspoiled here, but let's just say that Mansplaining on Ice could work as a plausible alternative title for the film. In a formally playful fashion and manner largely free of didacticism, Östlund skewers the hollowness of many notions of gender roles and offers a pitch-black comedy that's simultaneously full of raw emotion (Kongsli is absolutely fantastic) and as tense as many a great horror movie. A blizzard of discomfort and ambiguities. [Josh Slater-Williams]