TRIANGLE OF SADNESS : Tuesday 31st January 2023.

I finally got around to seeing the M Rated 'TRIANGLE OF SADNESS' this week after its Australian release on 26th December. This satirical black comedy film is Written and Directed by Ruben Ostlund in his English language feature debut, and follows his success with his highly acclaimed multi-award winning and nominated 'The Square' in 2017 with Claes Bang, Elisabeth Moss and Dominic West. This film saw its World Premier screening at last years Cannes Film Festival where it received an eight minute standing ovation and won the Palme d'Or and has so far picked up another eighteen award wins and fifty-nine nominations from around the awards and festival circuit (with many of those still awaiting a final outcome, including three Academy Award nods). Released in France at the end of September, in the US in early October, in the UK in late October and over Christmas in Australia, the film has so far recouped US$23M from its US$16M production budget and has garnered generally positive reviews.

Here then, fashion model couple Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean, in her last film role before her untimely death in August last year), are in a relationship and dating. Having eaten at a lavish up market restaurant the waiter presents a bill and places it on the table between them. Carl looks nervously at the bill while Yaya claims not to have noticed it. Carl becomes agitated at Yaya for expecting him to pay for meals even though she earns more than he does, and eventually she presents her credit card for payment, only for the waiter to return saying that payment was declined, twice. So she offers to pay cash, but doesn't have enough, so Carl pays after all. They bicker to and fro about money and gender roles. She admits that her relationship with Carl is for the engagement it earns them on social media, and that she wants to become a trophy wife, but Carl says that she will come to love him. 

They are invited on a luxury cruise free of charge aboard a US$25M superyacht in exchange for promoting it on social media. Among the wealthy guests are the Russian oligarch Dimitry (Zlatko Buric) and his wife Vera (Sunnyi Melles) who made their money in fertiliser, an elderly British couple Clementine (Amanda Walker) and Winston (Oliver Ford Davies), who have made their fortune manufacturing weapons, most notably hand grenades and land mines, Therese (Iris Berben), a wheelchair-user who is only capable of speaking a single sentence in German ('In Den Wolken' translated 'In the Clouds') which she does repeatedly following a stroke, and Jarmo (Henrik Dorsin), a lonely tech multi-millionaire.

The guests kick back and relax on the yacht, oblivious to the crew working to meet their every want, need and desire. The head of staff, Paula (Vicki Berlin), demands they obey the guests' absurd requests, including having every crew member jump off the boat via a water slide and swim in the sea. When the kitchen crew are also ordered to swim, the chef says that this means the food will go off, but the kitchen crew are ordered anyway. Meanwhile, the yacht's captain, Thomas Smith (Woody Harrelson), spends his time drunk in his cabin and conversing through his locked door with Paula who urges him to come out. 

Paula eventually coerces Thomas to sober up and attend the Captain's Dinner scheduled for Thursday evening at 8:30pm, as the yacht passes through rough seas and a heavy storm. A number of the guests become violently seasick, vomit heavily, and/or have diarrhoea, and frenzied panic breaks out as the yacht lurches from side to side uncontrollably. The drunken Thomas and Dimitry are left alone in the dining room playing drinking games and argue about socialism and capitalism over the intercom. Meanwhile, several guests are injured as the storm tosses the ship, the toilets back up and sewage floods the boat, and the power goes out. When morning arrives, pirates attack, killing Clementine and Winston with one of their own hand grenades causing an explosion which ultimately capsizes the yacht. 

Carl, Yaya, Dimitry, Therese, Paula, Jarmo, Nelson (Jean-Christophe Folly) who claims to be a ship mechanic, and cleaner Abigail (Dolly de Leon) are the only survivors who are washed up on a remote island. Abigail turns up in a lifeboat washed onto shore the next morning with a supply of bottled water and potato chips. She, it turns out, is only one with any survival skills, such as catching octopus and fish and building fires, and quickly sheds her below deck crew member status and assumes command, as the other survivors recognise their reliance on her for food and warmth. 

As the survivors bond and come to terms with their new circumstances, Abigail assumes more power, getting her own private bed inside the lifeboat, and coercing Carl into a sexual relationship in exchange for him gaining special privileges and food. Yaya grows jealous, and Carl considers leaving her for Abigail. Jarmo kills a wild donkey by smashing it over the head repeatedly with a rock, which Dimitry and Nelson celebrate. 

Yaya one day decides to hike to the other side of the island to see what she can see, and Abigail volunteers to go with her despite Carl's concerns. Traipsing over heavy undergrowth and through mountainous terrain Yaya calls out to Abigail bringing up the rear, that she has found an elevator with beach umbrellas and deck chairs stacked up nearby, and realise they have been stranded close by to a luxury resort. Back at their camp, Therese encounters a beach vendor but is unable to communicate her situation. Yaya celebrates finding the elevator, but Abigail hesitates to enter, wanting to rest up for a few moments to savour their solitude together. Abigail excuses herself to take a pee and then stealthily walks back prepared to attack Yaya with a rock. She hesitates, however, when the oblivious Yaya suggests that Abigail could perhaps work for Yaya as her Assistant. Carl is then seen frantically running through the undergrowth that Yaya and Abigail had previously trodden. 

'Triangle of Sadness' is a film of this moment in time when the world is gripped by social media, of influencers, of gender dynamics, of the have's versus the have not's, of the political divide and of excess writ large all culminating in a survivalist story and a reversal of fortunes as the meek inherit the Earth (or the island at least!). Ostlund here unravels this story of the privileged, uber rich and powerful people as they come to ultimately lose their self-respect and freedoms firstly in gushing rivers of spew and shit, and then on the island as their fortunes are so readily and easily cast aside. The film is engaging enough despite its near 150 minute run time, and there are some genuinely funny laugh out loud moments here too, in which the Writer/Director displays in full view his deeply satirical view of the world and all the trappings of the rich and (in)famous. The international cast here all seemed keen to portray whatever depths of depravity that Ostlund was going to demand of them, but this film belongs to Dolly de Leon as Abigail, and Woody Harrelson who is always compelling and shines in his role as the drunken Captain in the all to brief screen time he is given. Charlbi Dean and Harris Dickinson also put in noteworthy performances. The ending however, left more questions unanswered and made me scratch my head wondering if Ostlund's dash to wrap things up quickly was a deliberate ploy to keep the run time at just under two and a half hours!

'Triangle of Sadness' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-