Force Majeure

Director's Statement

FORCE MAJEURE has its origins in a question I have long been fascinated by: How do human beings react in sudden and unexpected situations such as a catastrophe? The story concerns some holiday- makers who witness an avalanche and run away, terrified. When it is over, they are ashamed because they have succumbed to their primal fear. This particular story came about from an anecdote that I found impossible to forget. Some years ago, a Swedish couple, friends of mine, were on holiday in Latin America when suddenly, out of nowhere, gunmen appeared and opened fire; the husband instinctively ran for cover, leaving his wife unprotected. Back in Sweden, she could not stop, after a glass of wine or two, telling the story over and over again... My imagination fired, I began to research other true stories like this one - stories of distress and emergency, of passengers during the sinking of ships, of tourists striken by tsunamis or held hostage by hijackers. In such extreme situations, people can react in completely unexpected and exceedingly selfish ways. It appears - there are scientific studies on the subject - that in the aftermath of a catastrophe, a hijack attack or a shipwreck, a large number of the survivors divorce. It also appears that, in many cases, men do not act according to the expected codes of chivalry. In life or death situations, when ones very own survival is at stake, it seems that men are even more likely to run away and save themselves than women... Which may be the chief cause for those divorces. This made me want to talk about the received notion that a man is sup- posed to be the protector of his wife and family, the societal code that says he must not step back in the face of danger. From here, I arrived at the concept of an existential drama in a ski resort - something that seems to me awfully appealing. Ski holidays contribute to the feeling of having full control over one’s own life. Les Arcs, where FORCE MAJEURE was shot, was built in the 1950s, like most European ski resorts, to receive middle-class families consisting of a (sometimes working) mother, an executive fa- ther and two kids. The father is supposed to muck in, the fully equipped open-plan kitchens in the ski apartments giving the mother a chance to do things other than cooking, for instance to ski with her family, or to relax. Ski resorts are meant to be cosy, as the advertising shows: we can imagine the woman relaxing, her husband playing with the kids. (...)