Force Majeure (2014)

Force Majeure is an impressive and adult piece of work, bracing and intelligent.

Force Majeure is a brutally smart and original film.

Visually stunning even in its most banal moments and emotionally perceptive almost to a fault.

Östland writes the conflict between husband and wife beautifully, like a scab that gets picked at until it bleeds, and he does things cinematically, too, to suggest the growing distance between them—an already-cool visual palette broadens like a yawning chasm.

Force Majeure represents what is perhaps Östlund's most sophisticated thought experiment yet, at once provocative and wise. It is a penetrating study of that most ludicrous of social pretenses — masculinity, toxic and ubiquitous.