Writer and Director: Ruben Östlund
You can have too much of a good thing, both the premise and the key criticism directed at Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness, a film exploring the excesses and pointlessness of the super wealth, screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2022. But at close to 2.5 hours and taking place across three tonally distinct chapters, Östlund’s black comedy borders on the self-indulgent and while there are a number of clever set-pieces, it only has a couple of real points to make.
Model Carl and his influencer girlfriend Yaya disagree about money which starts to affect every conversation they have. When Yaya is given a free trip aboard a luxury yacht, the couple encounter a range of super-rich passengers including Russian billionaires, arms dealers and eccentric wealth ladies. But on the infamous night of the captain’s dinner, double disaster strikes, and a new world order is born.
Triangle of Sadness has a lot of going for it, a clever set-up that has the character assortment of a crime drama, a group of strangers brought together in one place and having to live through a personal disaster, as well as a quirky tone that revels in the lifestyle of the excessively monied while also sniping at it. There are also some really interesting meditations on class and privilege which comes nicely to fruition in the third act when the former toilet cleaner takes charge because she is the only one with any practical skill relevant to their new scenario.
And that distinct presentation of class, of the clean, wholesome looking young white people who act as the crew, the public face of the cruise liner looking like a cheesy gap advert in their crisp uniforms, and the literal underclass of mechanics, cleaners and others with ethnically diverse backgrounds kept hidden from the guests in the bowels of the ship, there to clean and operate without being seen. As a social metaphor, Östlund makes his point well.
But the three-chapter structure is a little laboured, first the rocky relationship between Carl and Yaya and their image-driven existence, then the lengthy cruise section and finally a Lord of the Flies-inspired reawakening of basic hunter-gatherer skills. Each section feels as excessive as the film’s subjects, scenes run on for too long, jokes are milked until they stop being funny and many indistinct or irrelevant conversations consume screen time without adding much to the overall story development.
The pivotal dinner scene, for example, is very well managed, drawing on influences including the equally famous banquet scene from Carry on Up the Khyber where the guests carry on despite the unfolding disaster. This is gross-out comedy but Östlund handles the timing effectively as well as the choreographed build up as the situation which becomes more and more absurd. What is lacking is any restraint, an editor who can call time at the peak.
There are good performances from Harris Dickinson as the permanently perplexed Carl and Charlbi Dean as the self-involved Yaya as well as Zlatko Burić as oligarch Dmitry and Henrik Dorsin as a lonely traveller. Dolly de Leon is particularly amusing as Abigail who takes charge with the kind of certainty and authority that earns an audience cheer. But as the super rich try the patience of Abigail and clearly Östlund, so too does Triangle of Sadness ask too much of the audience’s stamina.
Triangle of Sadness is screening at the BFI London Film Festival 2022.
