November 16, 2014 -- This high-rated Swedish film has a title that makes it look, in English anyway, like some kind of adventure film. That's what I was up for when I watched it last night. Turns out, this is a very heavy-duty family drama with lots of yelling and crying, anger, pain and disappointment.

It's a good film, really, just not what I was in the mood for after sitting through hours of the same kind of heavy drama earlier in the day during the Laramie Film Festival, no really, it's true. Anyway, back to the movie. Tomas and Ebba (played by Johannes Kuhnke and Lisa Loven Kongsli) are on vacation with their children Vera and Harry (Clara Wettergren and Vincent Wettergren) at a swank resort in the Alps. They should be having fun, but something is wrong. There is tension between husband and wife, and the kids feel it.

The tension gets more obvious when an avalanche threatens the family, seated for dinner at a high mountain resort patio. Tomas grabs his phone and runs away, leaving Ebba to care for the kids. The avalanche turns out not to be a real threat, but it is scary. Afterward, Ebba confronts Tomas, who denies what happened. The two try their best to smooth things over, but the memory of this incident keeps festering and it won't stay covered up for long.

Ebba brings up the incident again when friends visit, Mats and Fanny (Kristofer Hivju and Fanni Metelius) and forces Tomas to admit what he did by showing him video of the incident. This visibly shakes Tomas and he starts to fall apart emotionally. It also causes trouble between Mats and Fanny. Mats is divorced and Fanny is a much younger woman. She tells Mats that she thinks he would run away, too. Mats is hurt by the accusation.

The bruised egos of Tomas and Mats are key to this story, as well as their desire to fulfill the male ideal of provider and protector of their families. They both want to be perfect, but they know they are not. Mats is able to deal with his feelings better than Tomas, and he tries to help Tomas deal with his feelings of anger and inadequacy during a ski trip where they are isolated from the others.

Tomas eventually suffers an emotional breakdown, and Ebba and the children try to help him. Eventually, Tomas appears to allow Ebba to take more authority in running the family and no longer tries to maintain his male illusion of strength and wisdom, which is demonstrated in the movie's very strange final scene. There are some other side stories concerning a resort employee, and a woman with an open marriage who has a confrontational discussion with Ebba.

This is an emotionally powerful film about the struggles of people to deal with the restrictions and limitations of traditional male and female roles in modern marriage. It is a slow moving film and I thought some of the side stories and secondary characters distracted a bit from the story and robbed it of some of its power and relevance, but it is a good film, nonetheless. This film rates a B.

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