Force majeure

Un film Suedois dense, souvent dérangeant et parfois tres drole, ce qui ne gache rien.  Ca se passe en France dans une station de Ski et accessoirement offre des plans tres esthetiques et tres « parlants » (si on peut dire) de la Montagne.
Ci dessous qq commentaires personnels utilises pour mon cours de Cinema:

A film by Swedish director and writer Ruben Östlund, I had never heard of. It was selected to compete in the « Un Certain Regard » section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Jury Prize.
It is a precisely observed psychodrama that tells the story of a model Swedish family on a skiing holiday in the French Alps. Confronted to an avalanche, real personalities reveal and the cohesion of the family is threatened. It explores gender stereotypes and assumptions. It is disturbing and sometimes very funny.
The myth of the hero is at stake here, and interestingly it shows how such « cultural’ and emotional topic may have an impact on people not involved in the event but equally disturbed and threatened (ie here, another couple of neighbors (2) or even more amazingly couples in the audience! (hence my advice: better to be watched alone)
A very interesting observation of Interior conflicts (the essence of Fiction, as my Creative Writing teacher says).

Side comment: A couple of scenes were very funny, but in the theater most people were constantly laughing even in reaction to very dramatic scenes. I hope it was a sign of discomfort rather than a total misunderstanding of the film… (3)

(1) from this point of view, a bad move because the language was Swedish and the subtitles English. It is also interesting to note that the only French character recurrently appearing in the film, is a kind of pervert
(2) the male member of which states smartly « The hero is the enemy here »
(3) During the screening of « Dumb and Dumber to » (a less controversial piece of Art) there were less laughters (??) (4)
(4) for the anecdote there is an explicit quotation of Robert Conrad « Heart of Darkness » in the latter. Something I found unexpected but very smart to help blur the borders between genres