This review has initially appeared in our latest printed issue, available now in our online shop.

***

Although not relatively equal in size – in fact, a short film and two medium-lengths – the three parts in Ruben Östlund’s latest feature give the sensation of an equilateral triangle. The good part lies precisely in this value equality: maybe not worthy of the Palme d’Or, but still, Östlund would have won an award for any of these parts, even separately. The not-so-good part, the rather disappointing one, is that this equality leads to a lack of hierarchy, which would have given some coherence to his endeavor – which is somewhat ironic for a film about rankings. The entirety of the film is held together through sheer directorial will; and it’s a wholly separate issue that Ruben Östlund has all the strength to impose this will onto the spectator, who will duly ask for another serving – a square, if you will.

The first segment is an immersion into the world of fashion, which combines the satire of cultural-consumerist products, which the director previously explored in The Square, with a forceful return of his acute sense of social and relationship awkwardness (simultaneously funny and painful to watch), which he turned into his signature in his superb Force Majeure (and which crowned Östlund as the king of cringe). This is where the title comes from: “relax your triangle of sadness”, a casting agent tells Carl, “this area between your eyebrows”. Carl is a 28-year-old model, which means that he’s basically a pensioner in his profession – the triangle of sadness leaves an imprint, so his job is actually being an assistant to his photographer girlfriend, Yaya, who is also a photo model and an influencer, and younger too, but she wins much more money than he does. The fashion industry is the only one where the discrepancy between opportunities and salaries goes against the general trend. This creates a fertile ground for conflicts in the couple and power plays, along with a sociological dissection of human behavior, one of Östlund’s favorite occupations.

These two characters and their relationship are the pretext for what follows: which is essentially a disaster/ survival movie with easily-despicable rich people, split into two – before and after a shipwreck. Using her power as an influencer, Yaya obtains two spots on a luxury cruise, where the two characters slowly fade out of focus in favor of several collective characters: 1) rich Europeans that are tanning their white and flabby skin under the sun, 2) stewards that look like they’ve been pasted from an archival photo of a Hitlerjugend gathering – blonde, healthy, drunk on the illusion that they’ve willingly chosen this spot in the hierarchy –, ready to serve any absurd whims with smiles on their faces, and 3) the cleaning personnel, people of color that are economic migrants, hidden away in the yacht’s lower intestines, where they emerge from in the morning to mop the deck, and in the evening, to top the dining room. The third part is a reassembly of these hierarchies on a deserted island: “the revolution” is quick to arrive, as the new society – ostensibly egalitarian – rapidly constructs new power structures in a world where the old capital has ceased to exist, and the only relevant currency for the former elites,  unable to provide for their basic needs, is still beauty.

Östlund’s satire is neither incisive nor brutal, as you’ll probably read on the film’s poster and in the quotes featured in its trailer. The targets are (suspiciously) facile caricatures, and the complicity in which the film seeks to lure its audience (eat the rich!) is more similar to Don’t Look Up than it is to Parasite in terms of subtlety. However, the targets are easy precisely because Östlund doesn’t need much more than this, and the “revolution” motif is already there: the haves and the have-nots (here, Marxism follows the sociological rather than the ideological line: once the old order has been overthrown, people will build an equally-selfish new one on the island). Summary characterizations are the bare minimum that’s necessary in order to not feel pity when Triangle of Sadness casts its characters into pure hell with all the sadism, euphoria, and naivety of a grade-schooler – something infectious for anyone who doesn’t spend much time mulling over whether Östlund deserves to be lauded for taking the progressive side, or criticised for doing it so unsubtly, and with such lunk-headed humor.

Andrei Sendrea

Film critic and journalist, UNATC graduate. Andrei Sendrea wrote for LiterNet, Gândul, FILM and Film Menu, and worked as an editor on the "Ca-n Filme" TV Show. In his free time, he works on his collection of movie stills, which he organizes into idiosyncratic categories. At Films in Frame, he writes the Watercooler Wednesdays column - the monthly top of TV shows/series.