A Swedish family is on a skiing vacation in the French
Alps. One day during lunch, they’re
caught in an avalanche. The mother grabs
the two kids while the father grabs his cell phone and sunglasses and runs for
it. It turns out it was a controlled
avalanche, and they weren’t in any danger.
What they thought was a mountain of snow coming towards them was mostly
snow dust which dissipates within a minute.
But the damage is done.
After the event, the family is quiet. No one says anything, but they all know
something big just happened. It’s not
until the parents are having drinks with another couple that the wife says
what’s been on her mind. She can’t
believe that her husband’s first instinct was to save himself rather than his
children.
For the rest of the movie, they continue to discuss what
happened. There are long stretches of
beautiful scenery – this movie really makes me want to visit the French Alps –
but nothing much happens. Sometimes
there’s a good five minutes with no dialogue.
At some point, I started to get really bored with this movie. It seemed like I was watching them have the
same conversation over and over without really getting anywhere.
The performances were good.
It’s really interesting to watch these characters change. At the start of the movie, they looked like
the perfect family. By the end, both
parents are a mess. At one point, the
mother wants to go spend the day skiing by herself so she can get away from her
husband and think.
I feel like this would have made for a good short film. There’s maybe enough here to sustain 10 or 15
minutes. But the movie is two hours
long, and it was really a chore to get through.
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