Landslide brings them down: A family in crisis in Force Majeur

The Swedish 2014 film Force Majeur is extremely engrossing, disturbing, and unsettling start to finish - a compact, interior film (a descendent no doubt of the great interior dramas of Bergman) about a family of 4 on ski trip to the French Alps in which a single dramatic event exposes deep rifts in the family and, in particular, the hapless father: from the start, when the family with two very young (maybe ages 5 and8 or so?) kids get off a lift and awkwardly pose for photographs we sense there's something uncomfortable and no quite right here. The wife, Ebba, later explains to a stranger that husband, Tomas, has been working too hard and needs this break. As the four sit at an outdoor cafe for lunch or dinner they watch an approaching "controlled" avalanche that appears to suddenly rise up and out of control and to bear down on them; the children call "poppa!" and the wife huddles with them as the Tomas turns and runs for cover. This event proves revelatory and central - as we follow them through the extremely awkward and painful next day as none of them articulate their thoughts or feelings, Tomas later denying to Ebba that he turned and ran and says something like he's amazed that they have such different perspectives and can't they just agree on a story. And then things get even worse, especially as Ebba, getting a little flushed with wine over dinner, tells some strangers what her husband did (a very Swedish characteristic, I think - the repression, and the sudden alcohol-fueled outpouring of emotion). Over the course of the next four days they all try to come to terms with his behavior and with what it says about his personality, their marriage, their family - painful to watch the family sink to the lowest depths, with a bit of an uptick at the end, leaving us thinking, maybe they'll survive this, maybe (as we watch them walk down a mountain roadway amid a crowd of fellow ski-ers in a closing sequence that reminded me of Nights of Cabiria) we all carry flaws and hidden faults, maybe they're not so different from others, life will go on for them, albeit painfully and never quite the same. You also can't help thinking, as you watch this, what would I do?, and am I so sure?