I was so expecting Ruben Östlund to knock it out the park with his latest film, the Cannes Palme d’Or-winning Triangle of Sadness. As he’s shown with recent films Force Majeure and The Square (another Palme d’Or winner), the Swedish filmmaker loves to take the piss out of posh, self-centered people whose egos need some serious deflating. When I heard that his latest film would have rich people reveling in some gross, humiliating business, I couldn’t have been more psyched to see it. I thought this was going to be his magnum opus — sort of like Pasolini’s Salo, but it’s the wealthy who eat shit this time.
Alas, Triangle of Sadness is just that — a two-and-half-hour, three-part letdown. Östlund is less concerned with sticking it to the rich and populating a story with people who constantly try to wield their power and authority over people. In the first act we watch our protagonist, struggling model Carl (Harris Dickinson), get in a heated back-and-forth with his girlfriend, successful model Yaya (Charlbi Dean, who unfortunately died in August due to a viral infection), over who should pay for dinner. Apparently, dude is trying to establish who has the upper hand in this relationship. He gets upset when he ends up paying after his girl, who supposedly makes more money than him, barely acknowledges the check when it comes. (Ever the aspiring influencer, taking selfies with food she doesn’t eat, she is too busy on her phone.)
Their toxic romance continues as they take a vacation on a luxury yacht, along with other fancy-schmancy people. This four-star, armed-with-guards cruise figuratively and literally hits some turbulence when, thanks to a dinner filled with spoiled food and raging waters, the guests start getting sick all over the place. The movie reaches its side-splitting peak during this sequence, especially when a Russian fertilizer mogul (Nicolas Winding Refn regular Zlatko Burić) and the yacht’s self-loathing captain (a hilariously contemptuous Woody Harrelson), seemingly unaffected by all of this, get shitfaced and start spewing their respective ideologies over the PA.
After this part reaches its over-the-top conclusion, you’d think this film would start to wind down. But Östlund still has some points to make in his lengthy third act, when the ship’s survivors (including our lovebirds Carl and Yaya) are marooned on a deserted island and have to answer to one of the cruise’s cleaning ladies (Dolly de Leon), whose resourcefulness — ol’ girl can catch a fish with her hands! — turns her into the de facto leader.
It’s kind of unfortunate that Triangle (known in France as Sans Filtre — which basically means “no filter,” a far better title) cares less about being a shits-and-giggles, satirical burlesque and more about quasi-earnestly showing how desperate people are to take control over others, even if those people are ill-equipped to handle such responsibility. The movie is littered with folks who make ridiculous demands that eventually do more harm than good.
It’s a mission Östlund executes in a bloated, weary fashion. I mean, we already got the message up on the yacht, during a vomitorium segment that is basically an extended version of the notorious “Mr. Creosote” sketch from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. But he has to beat the hell out of that dead horse (among other things) on the island, coming to practically the same conclusion Lina Wertmuller did decades ago with Swept Away — a movie that was already remade lousily by Guy Ritchie and his then-wife Madonna in 2002. Believe it or not, this film reaches a climax that may remind viewers of that episode of Full House where the Tanner clan goes to Hawaii and gets stuck on a deserted island.
As much as Östlund wants to be the Ari Aster of elevated black comedy, Triangle of Sadness is — if I may borrow a Patton Oswalt punchline — a failure pile in a sadness bowl.
