Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Harris Dickinson, Charlbi Dean, Woody Harrelson, Vicki Berlin, Zlatoko Buic, Sunnyi Melles, Carolina Gynning, Henrik Dobson, Iris Berben, Jean-Christophe Folly, Dolly De Leon
Intro:
… has its moments of brilliance, but at heart, it is a blunt instrument.
If writer/director Ruben Östlund’s previous Palme d’Or winning film The Square can be viewed as shooting fish in a barrel in its approach to the pretentions of the contemporary art world, then his most recent Palme d’Or winner Triangle of Sadness can be likened to throwing a goldfish bowl at a wall.
Triangle of Sadness (named after the region between the brows) has a triptych narrative. The first section, titled ‘Carl and Yaya’, sets up the characters that the audience will be following through the film. Carl (Harris Dickinson) is a male model who is quickly sliding down the scale of employability. His last big gig was for a cologne company three years ago (a lifetime in model years). His girlfriend, Yaya (Charlbi Dean), on the other hand, is on the rise walking international catwalks and succeeding as an Instagram influencer. Even if the couple were both at the peak of their careers, the pay disparity between the two would be enormous (male models make a third of their female counterparts).
After a cringe inducing fashion show that Yaya is walking – where the clothing label put on the screen “Now is the climate for change” and “We are equal now” with feminist iconography – the couple have dinner together. When it comes time for the bill to be paid, Yaya studiously ignores it, forcing Carl to pay. They argue in a protracted and absurd manner (also quite funny in places), where Carl can’t give up the notion that Yaya presumes that he will pay for her, despite her being the wealthier of the two. “Talking about money isn’t sexy,” she says – but for people who don’t have it, the sexiness of the topic is somewhat irrelevant.
Truths eventually get told and Yaya reveals the transactional relationship that she has with Carl. He thinks they’re having a romance; she knows that his good looks boost her Instagram followers. At one stage, Carl mutters “fucking feminists.” Östlund is trying to discuss gender expectations in this section, but it isn’t really feminism that is the root of Carl and Yaya’s problems, and as the narrative unfolds no-one could call Yaya someone who is sincerely part of any sisterhood.
The second, and longest part of the film, ‘The Yacht’ takes place aboard a $250 million super yacht sailing around the Greek Islands. Carl and Yaya have been invited onboard because of her influencer status. The passengers are all fantastically wealthy. The visible service staff fronted by Paula (Vicki Berlin) are mostly white and attractive. As Östlund pans down through the ship, the audience sees that skins get darker – the less glamourous the role, the more likely a POC will be doing it.
Carl and Yaya meet a variety of passengers: a Russian Oligarch, Dimitry (Zlatoko Buic), who made his money selling fertilizer at the collapse of the Soviet Union, accompanied by his wife Vera (Sunnyi Melles) and his mistress Ludmilla (Carolina Gynning); two seemingly sweet old British people named aptly Winston and Clementine, who just happen to have made their money from international arms sales. Then there’s Jarmo (Henrik Dobson), a milquetoast tech millionaire who seems to be wife hunting. These are in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s words, “Careless people.” A small fit of jealousy by Carl sees an employee ejected from the boat. Vera’s decision that everyone should have fun, leads the crew to having to stop their duties and go swimming to please her. Dimitry, ‘The King of Shit’, is so sure that his money will keep Ludmilla by his side that he, along with Carl, mock Jarmo – that is until Ludmilla and Yaya start flirting with the man.
The ship of fools is captained by Thomas (Woody Harrelson), a reclusive alcoholic and Marxist who only makes an appearance at the Captain’s Table on an evening where a low-pressure system causes the yacht to rock uncontrollably. Östlund’s full force satire comes into play in a dinner scene that Buñuel would be proud of. People vomit and shit haute cuisine, but the social contract keeps them in the dining room far longer than is comfortable for anyone.
Dimitry and the Captain appear to be the only two unaffected by the rolling waves and take to drunkenly and hilariously quoting Marx, Twain, Lenin, Reagan, and Thatcher to each other. It’s a gag that pays off again when Dimitry quotes Marx for the first time in a very different environment. Chaos reigns on the yacht, with the passengers getting quite literally covered in their own, and other people’s shit and vomit (the toilets leak effluence all over the yacht). Come daybreak and we see the cleaners taking care of the mess. Something that becomes a pointless exercise when the audience reaches part three of the film, ‘The Island.’
The yacht is attacked by presumably Somalian pirates and a few survivors reach an island. Carl, Yaya, Jarmon, disabled passenger, Therese (Iris Berben), Dimitry (seemingly quite unbothered that his wife and mistress are dead), and yacht employees Paula, Nelson (Jean-Christophe Folly), and most essentially for all, toilet cleaner, Abigail (a brilliant Dolly De Leon).
With money and status no longer in play, the social currency on the island shifts rapidly. Abigail is the only one who knows how to fish, find food, and make a fire. Paula tries to keep her middle-management control over Abigail, but Abigail knows she has the power – “On the ship I am in charge of the toilets, here I am the Captain.” Anyone who doesn’t agree with that statement doesn’t get food. It may seem like a satisfying reversal, but in the end, Abigail’s community is just an inverted version of the one where she was previously on the bottom rung. She begins by setting up a kind of matriarchy which Paula and Yaya fall in line with, but as her authority increases, she abandons that for her own dictatorship where she controls the survivors because she has access to food and water. She takes Carl as a lover and somewhat hilariously, Carl begins to have the same conversations with Abigail as he did with Yaya in the first section.
Östlund’s thesis seems to be that we are all self-interested creatures, with no ability to work together as a community no matter what the circumstances. It’s hardly a revelatory idea, and the current milieu we find ourselves in, means that we aren’t sufficiently prepared to deal with the urgent issues our planet faces. Triangle of Sadness has its moments of brilliance, but at heart, it is a blunt instrument. Östlund has done better work, for example Force Majeure, which questioned the mores of a middle-class family. Triangle of Sadness forms a loose trilogy with that and The Square, but for all its ambition it is the weakest work of the three.
