So they\u2019re out to dinner, an expensive one at a posh restaurant, and the waiter drops the check, and neither of them, at least initially, pick it up. What follows is an interaction so perfectly observed and executed that it\u2019s sort of breathtaking \u2013 not just what they do, and what they say, and the responses those actions and words provoke, but how all of those details are then revisited and scrutinized, broken apart and reassembled, every wound carefully closed and then savagely reopened. It\u2019s like a perfectly realized little short film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, this is \u00d6stlund\u2019s stock-in-trade, feeling very much of a piece with the strained social interactions and awkward misconnections of his previous Palme winner The Square<\/em> and especially his breakthrough film, Force Majeure<\/em>. And because it\u2019s so directly in his wheelhouse, it\u2019s easy to understand why he takes that material as merely a starting point for Triangle<\/em>, and attempts to broaden his scope considerably. It doesn\u2019t always work, but you get what he\u2019s going for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Carl and Yaya are also fairly prominent in the two sections that follow, though more part of an ensemble. The second part, \u201cTHE YACHT,\u201d finds them on a luxury cruise, two of a handful of ultra-rich passengers; their fellow travelers include a Russian agriculture magnate (\u201cYou can call me the King of Shit,\u201d he roars, of his fortune made in fertilizers) and a kindly, retirement-age British couple who turn out to be munitions manufacturers (\u201cOur best-selling product is the hand grenade,\u201d one chuckles cheerfully). <\/p>\n\n\n\n Such stories of extravagance frequently go the upstairs-downstairs route, contrasting the wealthy and those who serve them. \u00d6stlund goes a step further, exploring the divisions even within the ship\u2019s working class; the cleaners and cooks and engineers, hardly seen, are all people of color, while the smiling on-deck crew that fetches drinks and attends to the immediate needs are lily-white (Nordic, even). Much tension is found in the slow, steady escalation of their interactions with the guests, because the crew\u2019s prime directive is to accept whatever nonsense whims they\u2019re presented with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All of which leads us to the big set piece, the much-ballyhooed \u201cCaptain\u2019s Dinner,\u201d though the Captain (Woody Harrelson, priceless) has spent most of the week in his cabin getting hammered. Unfortunately, the Captain\u2019s Dinner coincides with a brewing and then violent storm at sea, as rattling dishes and distant thunder give way to projectile vomiting and exploding toilets. The crew keeps going (\u201cMore wine, sir?\u201d) and so does \u00d6stlund, who does not cut away from the cacophony of crashing plates and bodily fluids, and makes a point to include, at its conclusion, the women cleaning the dining room and scrubbing the vomit from the floors. Some of the humor is cheap and juvenile; some of it is cruel and brutalist. And that\u2019s the point. It\u2019s very satisfying. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t think it\u2019s a spoiler to reveal that the ship does, in fact, go down, as bit of the third part (\u201cTHE ISLAND\u201d) appear in the trailer; its central conceit is that most of the crew perishes, but the one who does not, Abigail the toilet manager (Dolly De Leon) turns out to be the only survivor with any of the skills required to survive on an island, and this knowledge makes her feel, understandably, like maybe she\u2019s not an \u201cemployee\u201d anymore. And when it comes time to divvy up the fish she\u2019s cooked on the fire she\u2019s made, suddenly all these capitalists are socialists. (It\u2019s one of these weird contemporary movies where somehow COVID didn\u2019t happen\/isn\u2019t still happening, but there\u2019s pointed commentary here about those early days of the pandemic, and who exactly turned out to be \u201cessential\u201d workers.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n As is his style, \u00d6stlund traffics in crisp, pointed compositions; he doesn\u2019t move the camera much, so when he does, it matters. His visual approach is utilitarian; his movies look right, but how they look is not as important as what they say. And though he\u2019s working on a broader canvas this time around, his M.O. is the same: in scene after scene, in one carefully controlled conflict after another, he forces us (and I do mean forces <\/em>us) to examine our own biases and assumptions. Who are you sympathetic with in these conflicts? And why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n He only really steps wrong once, but it\u2019s a doozy. As the ship is getting knocked about (and the passengers\u2019 digestive systems with it), the captain, who is a pronounced Marxist, and the Russian capitalist get blackout drunk and argue about their economics and politics, first at each other and then over the ship\u2019s P.A. system. It\u2019s a long and unsuccessful stretch, cringe-worthy even, because \u00d6stlund\u2019s ill-advised insistence on slapping explicit political commentary on top of his farcical but heavy metaphors is a bit of a hat on a hat. It\u2019s rhetorical overkill \u2013 or worse, it means he doesn\u2019t think his audience is smart enough, so he has to spell it out. He\u2019s a better satirist than a commentator, in other words. But we already knew that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “Triangle of Sadness” is in theaters Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/triangle2-1024x576.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nB<\/strong>+<\/h1>\n\n\n\n