Fantastic Fest 2022: Triangle Of Sadness — A Wildly Funny Sendup Of The Rich And Beautiful
Celebrity model couple, Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean), are invited on a luxury cruise for the uber-rich, helmed by an unhinged boat captain (Woody Harrelson). What first appeared instagrammable ends catastrophically, leaving the survivors stranded on a desert island and fighting for survival.
In Triangle Of Sadness, Ruben Östlund doesn’t just eat the rich and the beautiful; he devours and humiliates them. This ferociously funny satire quite literally covers them in their own bodily fluids, flips their world upside down, and then places them under the microscope so we can watch them flounder. It’s as savage, incisive, exacting, thought-provoking, and hysterical as one can expect from an Östlund film, and it yet again showcases his penchant for immaculate framing, wonderfully squirmy social situations, and comedic cringe. You’ll pick up notes and echoes of Force Majeure and The Square here, but Triangle Of Sadness notably sees the veteran filmmaker steering his craft in a more accessible, crowd-pleasing direction, finding a pitch-perfect balance between unflinching restraint and raucous absurdity. If you’re anything like us, it will have you spewing chunks of laughter.
Divided into three sections, the film primarily follows two fashion models, Carl and Yaya, played by Harris Dickinson and Charlbi Dean, who are in a mostly transactional relationship — even though Carl aspires for more. They operate within the world of the wealthy elite, but they’re not really one of them, financially. They set the tone with a heated squabble over gender roles and who’s to pay the dinner bill. It’s their good looks that ultimately give them their station; they get a lot of things for free, like high-class luxury cruises, and this enables them to walk amongst the wealthy elite without really having to pay the tab, which is great for them since it saves them another argument.
Once we get to the yacht, we’re introduced to even more colorful characters, which include a Russian oligarch and his wife, an elderly couple who have made their fortune manufacturing weapons, a German guest who is capable of speaking only one sentence following an accident, and a lonely millionaire bachelor. Not to mention, the ship’s drunken and reclusive Captain (played by a wonderfully zany Woody Harrelson), who’s a self-professed Marxist. Östlund takes his time setting up the characters, making room to ridicule them along the way, but he cleverly doesn’t get us too acquainted with the crew. Since the wealthy guests don’t think much of the ship’s staff (save for the captain), neither does Östlund. All we know of the crew is that they’ve been instructed to say "yes” to a guest’s needs, whether that be “an illegal substance or a unicorn,” which you can imagine gets them into some pretty comical situations.
Östlund keeps the social hierarchy and his framing leveled out up until the “Captain’s dinner,” where things slowly begin to become crooked. Before the social structure is completely upended, Östlund gifts us two sequences of comedic gold; one involves the American communist Captain and the Russian capitalist trading quotes over their preferred political system, and the other involves some of the funniest puking you’ll find in any movie. Seriously, the puking here is up there with Team America: World Police, Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life, and Mafia!. It becomes clear that Östlund’s intent is to tear down society in order to discuss and explore alternatives, and a brief run in with some pirates help bring the social experiment into its last stage. Here, a maid name Abigail (played by Dolly De Leon) emerges as the hero, which disrupts the pre-established social order and leads to the film’s thought-provoking conclusion.
The ship might go under in Triangle Of Sadness, but Östlund’s steady hands keep the production afloat — and engaging — for its entire 149-minute run. If it’s not laugh-out-loud funny, it’s getting you to contemplate the social trappings we’re all imprisoned by, and the results are wildly entertaining. The sad truth is: no matter the system, whether it be capitalism or communism, someone’s sitting at the top. The point Östlund eloquently and humorously articulates is how once someone ascends the social hierarchy, they’re not really too keen on going back down to a lower station. Ultimately, by smartly choosing an ambiguous note to conclude, Östlund forces the viewer to ask themselves if they believe power of any kind can corrupt. It’s a great conversation starter and an even greater joy to behold; another Östlund winner.
Recommendation: If you love laughing, definitely give Triangle Of Sadness a watch! It’s one of the funniest films of the year, and you’ll likely see it somewhere on our end of the year list.
Don’t be a “grumpy” brand! Check out the links below:
Fantastic Fest Q&A: Triangle Of Sadness w/Dolly De Leon
The Square review
Five Fun Facts About Force Majeure
Fantastic Fest 2022 articles
Fantastic Fest 2022 reviews
Fantastic Fest 2022 podcasts
What do you think? We want to know. Share your thoughts and feelings in the comments section below, and as always, remember to viddy well!