Movie Review: Downhill

Downhill ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Nat Faxon and Jim Rash.

Written by: Jesse Armstrong and Nat Faxon & Jim Rash based on the screenplay by Ruben Östlund.

Starring: Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Billie), Will Ferrell (Pete), Miranda Otto (Charlotte), Zoe Chao (Rosie), Zach Woods (Zach), Julian Grey (Finn Stanton), Ammon Jacob Ford (Emerson), Giulio Berruti (Guglielmo), Kristofer Hivju (Safety Patrol).

 

When Hollywood remakes a popular foreign film, I think the assumption is that the audience will not have seen the original – because why else make it? For me, who loved Ruben Östlund’s Force Majeure (2014) then watching Downhill becomes an odd experience. To be fair, there is no reason why Östlund’s should not be able to transfer over to an American film – there is nothing inherently “Swedish” about it that won’t translate – it’s themes about marriage and parenting are universal. Watching Downhill though is an odd experience – not an unpleasant one, but odd – in that the film seems to be a little at war with itself – not quite knowing if it’s a comedy or not, or how broad it should go. And it tries to tack on, if not a happy ending, certainly a less ambiguous one. It’s a film that works in parts, more than the whole.

 

The story is about an American family, on a ski vacation in the Austrian Alps. Pete (Will Ferrell) has picked the more adult resort, rather than the family one 20 minutes away, so his two young sons (probably 12 and 10) are the only kids around. His wife Billie (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss) is chipper and cheerful, and trying to put a happy face on everything – but Pete is less sure about any of it. There is an unspoken strain in their marriage that is going to be pushed to the brink because of “the incident”.

 

The incident is question is when the family sitting down to lunch at an outdoor café at the resort, and a controlled explosive, setting off a planned avalanche, goes off. At first, the falling snow is beautiful, but as the wall of snow gets closer, it looks like it will bury them all alive. Pete, instead of helping his wife and kids, grabs his phone and runs away – as Billie and the boys huddle together. Of course, nothing serious happens – they get a little snow dumped on them, but nothing major – but know everyone knows what Pete would do in a crisis – grab his phone, run for his life, and leave his family behind.

 

Ferrell and Louis-Dreyfuss are, of course, expert comedic performers – and both have the ability to play serious if and when they need to. In Downhill, they will have to do both, and to be fair to both of them, they bring it. They are quite funny, and aren’t afraid to embrace the darkly funny material, and yet also play the dramatic moments well. They do seem like a married couple – a middle aged, complacent married couple, who are comfortable with each other, if not exactly happy, even if they don’t quite know that themselves.

 

The problems are that I don’t quite think directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash ever quite find the right tone for the film – at least not consistently. While Östlund’s film is a dark comedy, specializing in awkwardness – they kind you’d like to escape from, shield your eyes from, but you cannot look away – Faxon and Rash go broader with just about everything. Östlund’s film is an exercise in mastery of control of tone. Faxon and Rash’s film careens wildly all over the place. Individual scenes work – hell, most of the individual scenes work – but I don’t think they really come together, don’t cohere into a whole.

 

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the ending of the film. In Östlund’s film, it is an ambiguous ending – perhaps showing that the cracks are even deeper now, that there are still areas left unexplored. In Downhill, the final scene is played for laughs – a comforting way to end the film, instead of a challenging one. I do think that an American remake of Östlund’s film could be great – I even think Ferrell and Louis-Dreyfuss could pull it off. But it would require filmmakers of more daring and ambition than what they have here. Perhaps the film works better if you haven’t seen Force Majeure – if you have though, you probably just wish you rewatched that film – which would reward a second viewing, more than a first one of Downhill.