Triangle of Sadness premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Fredrik-Wenzel ©Plattform
Triangle of Sadness is a two-and-a-half-hour joke-a-minute biting satire of the rich and class that keeps you guessing in every scene. And despite having jokes like an extended 10-minute puke scene, it's a well-studied character study about people of privilege and how they would react with it taken away. The cast of characters that ranges from a capitalist Russian oligarch, a drunk Yacht captain, and two dating models are perfectly wrought parodies of the rich that you miss hanging out with after the final credits roll. I could have watched it for hours.
Triangle of Sadness is premiering at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. Update: Neon has acquired the film for distribution later this year
A few times during Triangle of Sadness, Swedish director Ruben Östlund's Palme d'Or-competing film at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, we see and hear “everyone's equal.” But nothing is quite as ironic as that phrase being splashed up on screens at a high fashion runway show or uttered on a luxury cruise targeted at billionaires and influencers. That's Östlund's intention. Every one of his films takes aim at something wrong in our society by taking people in power and with privilege and putting them in situations that take them away: an avalanche in Force Majeure, a leaked video in The Square, and now a catastrophe on a yacht in Triangle of Sadness.
But what he was exploring in his prior two films he perfected in Triangle of Sadness. The result is one of the best comedies in years.
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The movie is split into three parts plus a prologue where we meet model Carl (Harris Dickinson) on a casting call where he's hilariously told to relax his “triangle of sadness” aka the wrinkles between your eyebrows when you scrunch your face. “Maybe a little botox will help,” says one of the casting directors. Then, part one, titled “Carl and Yaya” begins.
Yaya (Charlbi Dean), a high fashion runway model, and Carl are at dinner when the check comes which she ignores until his hand barely grazes it and she thanks him for paying. This sets off a night-long argument about the principle of paying for dinner — something every couple has experienced at one point or another. Taken as its own short film, part one would be a perfect deconstruction of relationships where currency comes in power given and taken. More than once it's mentioned that Carl makes less than Yaya but he also points out that it's not about the money but the principle.
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We later catch up with them in part two, “The Yacht.” Carl and Yaya are among the passengers on a luxury yacht cruise that plays like a seabound version of Upstairs Downstairs where we spend time with the various ridiculous (and ridiculously rich) passengers and the staff that serves them led an overly ambitious and eager to please cruise director (Vicki Berlin). The part fully becomes a broad comedy as the cast of characters increasingly show how out of touch they are with the real world. Among them are war profiteers proud of their business, a capitalist Russian oligarch and his wife who insists the staff stop work and go for a swim, and the cruise's drunk captain (Woody Harrelson).
If the first part and cold open were closer to satire, this part is a purely broad comedy with hilarious introductions to the most out-of-touch rich people, a storm-laden drunken dinner, and a ridiculous 15-minute gross-out gag that's like Titanic with more puking. Particularly hilarious is Harrelson's Tom, a self-proclaimed socialist, and Dimitry (Zlatko Burić), a capitalist Russian tycoon, having a healthy commiseration of ideologies loudly and drunkenly broadcast over the ship's PA system.
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I'm not sure I want to tell you where the movie ends up. Part of the fun is the unexpected turn that it takes for its third and final part that sees the social system turned on its head as Gloria (Dolly de Leon), the Filipino toilet manager of the ship, finds herself in a new position of power. Let's just say it's like an episode of Survivor without the film crew. The hyjinks continue as the movie romps its way to a perfect ambiguous conclusion fit for its characters. By the movie's end, I was sad that I wouldn't be able to see more of them. I could have watched it for hours more.
Triangle of Sadness comes after a long run of “eat the rich” movies from Get Out to Parasite. While both of those movies have their fun, there is a darkness at their center. The value that Östlund brings to the genre is a lack of self-seriousness. Rich people are out of touch. We know that. He's not interested in adding the message. He's here to have fun and take the piss out of deplorable rich people (among other bodily fluids). If Triangle of Sadness proves anything it's that the broad comedy is not dead.
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Hey! I'm Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I'm also a Tomatometer-approved critic.
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