Mark Reviews Movies: DOWNHILL (2020)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 13, 2020

The credits state that Downhill is "inspired by" Ruben Östlund's Force Majeure, a 2014 film from Sweden that subtly but perceptively examined ideas of cowardice, societal gender roles, and what strange forces can keep a marriage together, even after it appears to be devastated. "Inspired" is the correct word for co-writers/co-directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash to use. This film takes the basic premise of its originator and essentially follows the same narrative trajectory. It's a very different film, though, in terms of its tone, as well as its tendency to more overtly say what was left between the lines of the original.

"It's not better," husband/father Pete (Will Ferrell) tells his two sons about a family ski resort, where the guys have gone to let wife/mother Billie (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) have a day out on her own. "It's just different." Faxon, Rash, and co-screenwriter Jesse Armstrong might as well have included that description for the audience to mimic about their adaptation.

It's not better. It's not worse. It's just different, and thanks to the retention of Östlund's cutting story and the two lead performances, this version, although a bit more judgmental and plenty more explicit about its themes, is also a smart and observant study about a marriage suddenly put in jeopardy and then decisively coming to the brink of collapse.

For those who haven't seen Östlund's film, the gist of it is that Pete, Billie, and their two sons, Finn (Julian Grey) and Emerson (Ammon Jacob Ford), are on vacation in the Alps (This version swaps France for Austria—perhaps for tax credits or for one character to have a sterner-sounding dialect or just for the purposes of making the distinction between the two films even clearer). On the surface, they're all having fun, although Pete is distracted by his co-worker's social media posts about a European adventure, Billie notices her husband's apparent discontent, and Emerson clearly doesn't have as firm a grasp of skiing as the rest of his family.

The disappointments, frustrations, and tensions are subtle at first. The turning point arrives while the family is having lunch on a balcony overlooking the mountains. There's an explosion, which is common here: At night, the booms echo across the mountains in the resort's efforts to keep the snow under control and to prevent any dangerous, unpredictable avalanches. There is an avalanche, and like everyone else on the balcony, the family watches as the large mass of snow rushes toward the resort. In a matter of seconds, people start to worry.

As an impact seems inevitable, Billie grabs her sons and covers them as best as she can. Meanwhile, Pete grabs his cellphone and rushes—as fast as he can in his ski boots—away from the avalanche.

The screen goes white for a long beat, and then the snowy mist clears. Pete returns and orders soup as if nothing has happened. Billie just stares at him—disbelieving daggers of disappointment and anger and shock in her eyes.

Unlike the original film, in which the husband/father's actions were left somewhat of a mystery (because the vital moment was shot from a distance), Pete's actions are perfectly clear (Faxon and Rash use close-ups and insert shots to ensure that we see what he does). He ran. He left his family behind, perhaps to die.

The rest of the story sees Pete staying silent about the incident, claiming it was nothing because nothing ultimately happened, and denying what he did, claiming more unbelievable motives as Billie shoots down his excuses. He has plenty (probably worked out in his silences), even seeming to try to cover for himself when the resort's safety supervisor (played by Kristofer Hivju) says that notices about the controlled avalanche were posted throughout the resort. There's pointedly uncomfortable humor in watching Pete, played with unflattering but effective selfishness and resentment by Ferrell, work through the virtues and complications of jumping on this possible excuse.

Here, the filmmakers thrive in that potential for discomforting, awkward humor, especially when Zach (Zach Woods), the aforementioned co-worker, and his girlfriend Rosie (Zoe Chao) stop by to have dinner with Pete and his family. Already questioning her marriage and annoyed at her husband's lies about how these relative strangers ended up in their hotel room, Billie unleashes all of her thoughts and feelings about her husband's actions on the balcony.

It mirrors an earlier scene, in which Billie, tapping her finger in a kind of post-traumatic reflex, stays silent and fumes as her husband deflects conversation from the only thing that really matters right now. This, though, is her turn to talk, and she does—despite a rationalizing Zach, with the encouragement of a sympathetic Rosie, and, in a moment of particularly uncomfortable comedy, through the witness testimony of her sons.

The strength of Louis-Dreyfus' performance isn't just in these scenes—although they are showcases, elevated by the contemplative quiet of the rest of her performance. It's in how we can sense Billie's constant evaluation and re-evaluation of her life, her marriage, her own memory (since Pete tries to gaslight her—poorly, of course), and her willingness to put up with a man who clearly has prioritized his own life and desires over those of herself and their children.

Faxon and Rash find some sympathy for Pete (He's going through a crisis, triggered by the death of his father and the resulting recognition of his mortality), but the film is most definitely on Billie's side. That's not how the original saw its central relationship, of course, but again, Downhill is a different film. In this version, that's the correct perspective to have.

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