Triangle of Sadness

Scoring Ruben Östlund his second Palme d’Or plus an eight-minute standing ovation – and walkouts – at Cannes, Triangle of Sadness is a wildly funny, wildly outrageous satire of the vulgarly rich and beautiful.

Models and Insta-fluencers Carl and Yaya don’t have the healthiest of relationships – with each other, with reality or with money. But they have enough cachet to score themselves a trip on a luxury yacht, where their super-wealth is outstripped by the ultra-filthy lucre of the other passengers, including a Russian tycoon (plus wife and mistress), an elderly British couple and a sad-sack tech billionaire. When a perfect storm turns an onboard degustation meal into a disgusting ordeal and ultimately makes boat people of the ship’s one-percenters, the stage is set for the class inversion of your most schadenfreudian fantasies.

Following his satirical takedowns of male ego (Force Majeure, MIFF 2014) and art-industry pretence (The Square, MIFF 2017), Östlund now takes a sledgehammer to the jugular of obscene wealth in his first English-language film. Harris Dickinson (Beach Rats, MIFF 2017) as Carl and Woody Harrelson as the vessel’s eternally sozzled captain are standouts among a superb cast that has helped thrust the Swedish writer/director to the ranks of the dual-d’Or elite, alongside Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Haneke, the Dardennes and Ken Loach.

“Östlund takes the handbrake off altogether with a takedown of the super-rich aboard a superyacht that plays like Buñuel by way of the Farrelly brothers … A wild ride and in many ways, it’s also the perfect comedy for our times.” – Time Out