Force Majeure (Ruben Ostlund, 2014)

8/10
What a great title for this movie. Force majeure is legally defined as a "chance occurrence, unavoidable accident" (Wiki). Perhaps more relevant to the film, force majeure "[does] not excuse a party's non-performance entirely, but only suspends it for the duration of the force majeure" (Wiki again).
A near-miss avalanche that sees husband and father Tomas running for cover leaving his wife and 2 young children behind is the central concern of the film. For Tomas, the episode is little more than a story to tell at dinner; for his wife, it's a minor annoyance that slowly grows into a major impasse (a metaphorical avalanche so to speak): her perception of Tomas is permanently altered. The way this event is treated among the movie's characters was one of my favorite aspects of the movie. It's almost like an horror movie epidemic (underlined by the score's Hitchcockian string stabs), slowly infecting almost everyone who comes into contact with it: Tomas, his wife, their kids, their friends, and, more indirectly, an entire busload of people. Eventually Tomas is forced to confront his own actions, both to himself and to his children, pathetically staging a perilous situation on the ski hills where he can "rescue" their mother in front of them, an attempt to restore some kind of balance to their now-skewed family unit.
The movie makes for an interesting commentary on the fragility of not only our relationships but ourselves as people and who we are, or who we think we are. I found it very interesting to learn afterward that writer/director Ruben Ostlund came up with the movie after reading about a dramatically high rate of divorce among couples who survive major catastrophes.
The movie is beautifully shot, both in its ski resort interiors and mountain exteriors. I found it suffered from a similar "problem" as Ostlund's 2011 film Play - it presents a really interesting dilemma and asks some difficult questions that don't have easy answers, but ultimately there are niggling feelings of...incompleteness? Both movies were like reading a thought-provoking op-ed piece. I appreciate the questions they asked but I might have hoped for a little more closure and, once the questions are out there, it's hard to see much value in returning to the essay or film again. As much as I liked Force Majeure, I don't see a whole ton of value in repeated viewings, which maybe knocks its score down a notch for me.

Play (Ruben Ostlund, 2011)

7/10
Swedish film about a group of 5 young African-American boys who con a group of 3 other boys (2 white, 1 Asian) out of one of their cell phones. Despite an almost total lack of violence or any other form of physical intimidation, the film shows in cinema-verité style how the 3 victims become almost like slaves to their aggressors. They aren't physically being restrained, and all the action takes place in open, public spaces, generally under the indifferent eye of adults. The film acutely portrays the social hierarchies in the groups - either as two units of 5 and 3, or together as a whole, while never dropping the tension between them. It's a very deft take on the way kids interact with each other, whether in situations of power or submissiveness. But the ending is kind of silly and a simultaneous plot thread about a cradle abandoned on a train is distracting more than anything else.