"Triangle of Sadness" - Film Review
Writer/director Ruben Östlund has made a career in satire. The art world of the subject of his Oscar-nominated film, The Square. Force Majeure uses an avalanche to pick apart a crumbling marriage. In Triangle of Sadness, Östlund turns his eye to the ultra-rich vacationing on a yacht. The guests include models (Harris Dickinson and Charlbi Dean), a Russian oligarch (Zlatko Burić), a tech millionaire (Henrik Dorsin), weapons manufacturers (Oliver Ford Davies and Amanda Walker), and other uber-wealthy clientele.
Take the film’s much-talked-about low-brow, gross-out-humor sequence that involves widespread seasickness. While it initially seems more reserved than other prolonged, gross, bodily-fluid scenes from other movies, Triangle of Sadness’ offering turns into a seemingly never-ending shit storm (no pun intended). It’s perhaps the film’s weakest moment and effectively kills the forward momentum for (what feels like) twenty minutes. The unexpected plot deviation that comes immediately after revives the movie. Especially when the focus shifts to one of the yacht’s poor cleaners (Dolly de Leon).
Triangle of Sadness is a clunkier Parasite. Both films seek to critique the chasm between the rich and the poor and show how out of touch the wealthiest people are when it comes to the most basic of tasks. Despite having similar runtimes, Parasite feels far leaner. Each scene is meticulously plotted to carry the audience to the film’s bloody ending. Triangle of Sadness, on the other hand, is meandering. A bit of a sluggish walk through social commentary that never delivers the sucker punch the audience so desperately wants.
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This film is a social criticism that’s palatable for the elite audiences that crowned it winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes. It’s all bark, but absolutely no bite. The last third of the movie turns away from being a class satire in favor of being a half-baked survival flick. When describing the movie, Östlund explained that he wanted to play with the idea of beauty as a form of currency. Even that theme is dropped fairly quickly, despite having an engrossing opening first third that perfectly encapsulates beauty as a commodity.
Compared to the viciousness of this year’s The Menu, Triangle of Sadness is not as scathing as it wants to be. There are moments of genuine humor that will surely get a chuckle from the audience, but Triangle of Sadness loses credibility by backing off in the film’s final moments. We’re left with a cliffhanger, a reminder of the limits Östlund could have gone to.
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