Rating: R | Runtime: 147 minutes
Release Date: October 7th, 2022 (USA)
Studio: Neon
Director(s): Ruben Östlund
Writer(s): Ruben Östlund

A Russian capitalist, and an American communist.

I think it’s official: Ruben Östlund films just aren’t for me. While I enjoyed Force Majeure a lot (yet still not as much as it seemed everyone else around me did), The Square was simply too scattershot and on-the-nose to really enjoy it as more than a lark.

I feel the same about Triangle of Sadness, probably because it’s pretty much the same film—skewering the fashion world and capitalism instead of the art world. Both have memorable dinner scenes. Both possess a game cast with some genuinely hilarious moments. And both are way too long. Östlund has some great ideas, but it almost seems his goal is to intentionally push the joke beyond its limits of insufferability.

I love the idea of satirizing the wealth gap by having outlandishly rich patrons on a yacht juxtaposed against the overworked and fearful help desperately seeking a big tip they probably won’t get (rich people are often rich because they are the most frugal people alive). I’m not sure Östlund actually brings anything new to the table on the topic, though.

He pokes fun at those who earn their wealth with filth (Zlatko Buric’s “shit salesman” is an unhinged riot), weapons, and influence (the late Charlbi Dean’s Yaya and Harris Dickinson as her boyfriend Carl are the straight men and thus de facto leads), but only for gags. Even Woody Harrelson’s comedic timing can’t save an underwritten role that’s only here as a socialist American foil to Buric’s capitalist Russian. And the help rarely get more than directions to look awkwardly uncomfortable.

Act One intrigues because of its intimate scale and conversations about gender roles where it pertains to money (it’s just Dean and Dickinson arguing about financial intent when it comes to dating). Act Two widens the scope by putting them on a cruise well out of their price range (Yaya got tickets in exchange for some Instagram posts), but it quickly pushes them to the background to let the caricatures around them act like fools.

Act Three flirts with true commentary by leaving a handful of passengers shipwrecked on an island with the yacht’s “toilet manager” (a wonderful Dolly De Leon) flipping the table to become their leader as the only person who can survive with her own two hands, but it never takes the next step. Östlund is an expert at writing gags, but I just can’t buy that they add up to anything like so many others apparently can.

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Charlbi Dean, Dolly De Leon, and Vicki Berlin in TRIANGLE OF SADNESS. Photo by Fredrik Wenzel ©Plattform Produktion.