Review: 'Downhill' is a dark comedy that showcases Julia Louis-Dreyfus's serious side

The marital comedy “Downhill” is billed as a showcase for two of the biggest comic talents we have, Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus — but, as it goes along, it’s possible the stars weren’t aligned.

Ferrell and Louis-Dreyfus play Pete and Billie Staunton, a long-married couple on a ski vacation in the Austrian Alps with their teen sons (Julian Grey and Ammon Jacob Ford). Things seem fine, though it’s clear Pete is preoccupied, texting with his officemate, Zach (Zach Woods), who is backpacking around Europe with his girlfriend, Rosie (Zoë Chao).

After one ski run, the Stauntons are sitting at a cafe table outdoors, when a controlled avalanche starts looking a little out of control, and barreling right towards the terrace. Pete jumps up, grabs his cellphone, and runs away — leaving Billie and the boys screaming in panic. The threat turns out to be nothing, just a dusting of snow. But the fear, and the anger at Pete’s reaction, burn in Billie’s brain long into the vacation.

Directors Jim Rash and Nat Faxon (“The Way, Way Back”), who rewrote a script by Jesse Armstrong (the creator of HBO’s “Succession”), make a significant nod to their source material: Ruben Östlund’s 2014 Swedish film “Force Majeure.” They even cast Kristofer Hivju (“Game of Thrones”), who played the Zach Woods character in the original, as a ski-resort official who shoots down Billie’s threat of legal action: “This isn’t America, where you can sue if your coffee is too hot.”

The key difference between the films is that Östlund focused mostly on the husband, and his growing sense of shame and emasculation at his decision in the avalanche. In “Downhill,” Ferrell gets a bit of that emotion to work with, but the real focus is on Louis-Dreyfus’ Billie and what will she do now that she sees her husband, the rock on which she has built the foundation of her life, isn’t as solid as she thought.

Putting the weight on Billie is a good call, because Louis-Dreyfus modulates these emotions beautifully. Ferrell has handled serious stuff before (“Everything Must Go” and “Stranger Than Fiction” come to mind), but he doesn’t get the big emotional moments his co-star does.

It’s fascinating that for the first 40 minutes of “Downhill,” Louis-Dreyfus is not even doing comedy. Her struggle to hold it in, when she wants to scream at Pete, is the stuff of high-caliber drama, and Louis-Dreyfus plays it perfectly. Eventually, Dreyfus cuts loose, in scenes with a sexually voracious concierge (Miranda Otto) or a hunky ski instructor (Giulio Berruti), and her ability to deploy Billie’s rage through comedy is as cathartic as it is funny.

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‘Downhill’

★★★

Opens Friday, February 14, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language and some sexual material. Running time: 86 minutes.