Force Majeure is a 2014 Swedish film, directed by Ruben Östlund.
A Swedish family - Tomas and Ebba and their two children - are on holiday in the French Alps. One day while they're having lunch in an outdoors restaurant, an avalanche hits. While Ebba protects her children, Tomas panics and runs for his life. But it turns out to be a completely harmless controlled avalanche that does nothing more than dust them with some fine snow, and now they have to spend the rest of the week together knowing that Tomas chose to abandon them...
The film received a fully English remake in 2020 entitled Downhill.
Tropes in this film include:
- Disaster Movie: Subverted. Everything up until the avalanche looks like it's setting up one of these... Then the avalanche turns out to be harmless and the real disaster is the fallout from Tomas abandoning his family to save himself.
- Kick the Dog: The plot of the movie kicks off when Tomas ditches his wife and children when it appears that an avalanche is about to fall on them. To rub salt in the wound, he grabs his wallet before trying to flee.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Tomas hates himself for trying to flee without his family, as he confesses to Ebba during their argument.
- Crowd Panic: The people on the balcony react this way when it seems like the controlled avalanche is going to actually hit the ski resort, with most of them running inside to safety.
- Papa Wolf: Notably averted. Tomas's first thought when the avalanche is about to seemingly come onto them is to run away, not thinking of ensuring his family is safe first instead of himself.
- Running Gag: Tomas keeps locking himself out of the hotel room.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Everyone on the balcony flees inside when they think an avalanche is about to come for them. Notably, Tomas does this by instinct instead of also grabbing his family.
- Truth in Television: Yes, "controlled avalanches"
do exist and Tomas wasn't being willfully oblivious. Controlled avalanches are done in order to stabilize the snow in order to prevent would-be disastrous avalanches and are risk assessed beforehand.
