Triangle of Sadness

Having enjoyed Ruben Östlund's two critically acclaimed satires so far (Force Majeure, The Square), I was ecstatic given the fact that the film won the Palme D' ...

Östlund is content to stay on the level of youthful enjoyment, capturing wealth and privilege in cheap shots. The yacht portion of the film culminates in a dinner scene that leads to vomiting and diarrhea for almost everyone involved, and the alcoholic, self-proclaimed Marxist captain gets caught in a play on words with a Russian manure tycoon. The crew is instructed to satisfy every whim of the rich man in exchange for a bonus at the end of the cruise. This part of the film is episodic and increasingly radical, making constant comical jabs at the rich man’s ignorance and capriciousness, but the jabs are mostly juvenile. A Filipino toilet cleaner called Abigail sits at the bottom of the yacht hierarchy, taking on a leadership role as the only person in the group capable of fishing and igniting fear. In a scene reminiscent of The Wolf of Wall Street, he is shown to have the same values as the rich – making money and chanting “Money, gold, gold!” singing in unison. As Abigail is a new character we’ve hardly seen before, she’s yet another stereotype, this time standing in for the world’s poor and downtrodden. So the beauty of the couple, like everything else in the film, is a form of currency, a commodity. It’s the film that Cannes directors and critics have decided is the best film here, and it’s bad. . Instead, the couple will be merely equal parts in a large cast of petty characters who live on the yacht. The film’s title refers to the wrinkles in the skin that form between the eyebrows when you frown, and eventually become permanent, making you look older. The title may also be a reference to our unequal social hierarchies, a topic the film seems to explore.