Triangle of Sadness - Film Review

Triangle of Sadness - Film Review

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Posted 2022-12-16 by Nicholas Gordonfollow
Hold onto your sickbags, folks. Swedish director Ruben Ostlund's Triangle of Sadness, which won the top prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival, features litres of vomit (not to mention exploding toilets). The backdrop is a luxury yacht packed with wealthy Europeans. And the epic seasickness, which occurs during a captain's dinner, is just the start of the trouble for the passengers. The dinner scene is the memorable, and admittedly hilarious, centrepiece of the film, which otherwise sees Ostlund spend well over two hours mocking the rich in spectacularly unsubtle fashion.



Before we set sail we meet Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean), young models who are dating (Yaya is also an influencer). Yaya seems to be more successful - she headlines glitzy runway shows, while Carl lines up in huge casting calls. An early scene has the two arguing over paying the bill in a fancy restaurant, with Carl upset that Yaya doesn't offer to pay. The argument progresses (it becomes fairly heated), with Carl protesting that it's not about the actual money and Yaya insisting she's happy to pay, after all, she earns more. It's an intriguing sequence, but soon forgotten.

That's because we then find the couple sunning themselves on a huge yacht. They are the youngest guests aboard an expensive cruise; their passage free courtesy of Yaya's influencing work. The pair take the sun and dine with the other passengers, including a geeky tech millionaire, an arms-dealing British couple and a Russian fertiliser salesman, among many grotesque others. This new European aristocracy is tended to by a fawning staff who are warned never to say no to the guests.

Not saying no leads to some comical situations, such as when the entire crew must use the ship's waterslide for the amusement of the Russian oligarch's wife. But real trouble soon comes. The yacht's captain (played by Woody Harrelson) has been drunkenly holed up in his room for the entire voyage. Pressed for when the important captain's dinner will be held, he makes an ill-advised decision to coincide it with poor weather. Soon the ostentatious fine-dining menu (think truffles on top of caviar with chilli oil) and heaving seas lead to queasiness on a grand scale. The voyage manages to get even worse and the film's final act introduces more problems for the passengers.



His previous film The Square (also a winner at Cannes) ridiculed the art world, but Triangle of Sadness sees Ruben Ostlund fix his lens on the European super rich. The resulting satire is sometimes vaguely amusing but often blunted by its obviousness and many of the plot twists are largely unsurprising. Ostlund's style is always to emphasise the readily apparent: here it's like he's in the background constantly pointing his finger and saying, 'see how dumb the rich are?'

The film is also stuffed with many strands that are never followed through on. Carl and Yaya, who are the sole focus at the beginning, eventually become two of many, rendering the intense early scenes focused on them pointless. And it's in the film's final act where the story is weakest, when it's revealed a maid is the only one with any practical life skills.

Triangle of Sadness presents as a big and buzzworthy film. But it's going to be a challenging sell. The captain's dinner scene is a wonderful set piece, riotously funny, but possibly not for everyone. Other than that, there are only snippets to like, and there's just too much flab in the two-hour-plus run time. What's absent is inventiveness and genuine surprise.



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83234 - 2023-06-11 06:39:35

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