“Triangle of Sadness,” a brutal mockery of influencers and billionaires, seduces Cannes

Attributed to the Palme d’Or after the surprise The square, Ruben Östlund’s finely conceived, expressive, but occasionally quite pious piss on the art world, Cannes waited impatiently for the director’s next move. Its follow-up, which is broadly a socio-political satire of the influencer-led one percent, takes all of Östlund’s best qualities — namely formal panache, a discerning eye for cringe comedy and an impetuous appetite for farce — and crashes them , to make a film of almost pure pleasure, whose relentless attacks on the unequally privileged of our world are sledgehammer-heavy in the best sense of the word. triangle of sadness is an absolute delight in a film that, in addition to its many qualities, offers a bravura scene of sustained heavy-handed comedy that makes up the puke sequence Team America: World Police look like something A room with a view.

triangle of sadness– so named for the tiny frown between a person’s eyebrows (in this case between the beautifully sculpted brows of gorgeous male model Carl, played by Harris Dickinson) spends his first third in the world of modeling and influencers. We first meet Carl at an audition in the company of two dozen other breast-blessed demigods, and then watch as he engages in a painful, beautifully-written argument over a restaurant bill with his South African influencer girlfriend, Yaya. From there, the film moves on to a cruise the couple takes that goes hilariously wrong (culminating in the gut and gut whirl sequence mentioned above), and in a third act, the couple finds themselves on a deserted island in the Company stranded again by various other multi-millionaire passengers and a member of the kitchen crew.

From all these scenarios, Östlund wrings every last drop of painfully sharp comedy, displaying not only a keen eye for detail in the way he writes his dialogue, but also a great deal of formal brio in his staging and composition. For example, during Carl’s early argument with Yaya over a restaurant bill she’s expecting of him, Ostlund digs deep, deep into every dimension of the argument, teasing elements of the couple’s language, gender performance, sexual dynamics, and brilliantly staging a passage of that set -to be in an elevator with a door constantly closing between the two protagonists, causing Carl to stick a hand through the doors in irritation every other minute. This tremendous eye for detail, for the sheer joy that such devices can evoke in viewers, is evident at every turn in this film’s birthday present. It’s there in the old gun-dealer couple on the cruise whose names are Clementine and Winston (named after Churchill and his wife); It’s there in the needling of Insta influence, in a scene where Yaya poses for a series of photos with a bowl of spaghetti before throwing it away because of her gluten intolerance. After a while, even the fact that Harris Dickinson walks around the place topless in almost every scene starts to feel deeply comical in itself.

The target of Östlund’s kicks in this film is the grotesque, affluent upper class of the new globalized world order. It should be said upfront that while the director’s aim is true, his attacks are not the least bit subtle: during the cruise portion of the film, Östlund spends a considerable amount of time in an argument between an American Marxist and a Russian capitalist; in the island part he designs a pointed new social hierarchy with about as much delicacy as a herd of elephants rampaging through a savannah. But in a film so delicious, where nasty visual gags amplify the sheer fury of the discourse, subtlety isn’t the order of the day. When the stranded millionaires begin to be led by a former maid to their deserted island, where overnight rich and poor have become equal, Östlund’s argument is as obvious as a slap in the face. But the joy is in the execution: Abigail (magnificently played by Dolly De Leon), the new boss of this piecemeal society, demands obedience from her castaways, who are all told to call her “Captain” in exchange for food. In this seemingly trivial scene, but inhabited by glowing anger, Harris Dickinson in particular is having a great time as a model, whose prestige has meanwhile been reduced to (almost) nothing. When Carl realizes he can trade his sexual magnetism for food, another layer of noisily dark awkwardness is added.

Dickinson, in the lead role of Carl, arrives triangle of sadness his best role since the young queer character played by Eliza Hittman beach rats: It’s a wonder to see him used so well by Östlund, who knows perfectly how to exploit Dickinson’s charisma, talent and (especially) his smiling, shy attitude towards his own personal beauty. watch him read Ulysses topless (a stunning visual gimmick) or petty arguing with your girlfriend over noticing an attractive man, or spraying yourself with a bottle of perfume on a deserted island where such luxuries couldn’t be less relevant produces a lot of it joy in the movie. Why haven’t more movies made insanely attractive people deeply hilarious?

In The square, Östlund occasionally lost track of his story by over-moralizing, which detracted a little from the film’s formal precision and juicy comedy. The director certainly has an ending in mind here, but approaches it less unctuously, culminating in the desert island section where the director can tease out everyone’s socio-political relationships without neglecting the joke. This is where existential metaphysics rubs shoulders The office-style cringe comedy in a way that feels entirely natural, as in a delightful scene where Carl and another castaway disregard Abigail and break into the group’s rationed supply of pretzel sticks. Carl’s fragile relationship with Yaya is also tested here in a way that feels tinglingly true.

triangle of sadness is imperfect, and some will judge it for too long, but the sheer chutzpah of his company and the Swiftian, all-devastating panache of his set pieces, as well as Östlund’s unerring eye for executing a truly cinematic farce, make this the most entertaining film to have shown at Cannes became.