Triangle of Sadness

Writer/director Ruben Östlund takes a darkly comedic view at the problems of rich people in Triangle of Sadness offering a bickering couple (Harris Dickinson and Charlbi Dean) brought together to further each of their modeling careers which blossomed into a real relationship, of sorts, who are invited aboard a luxury superyacht cruise if they agree to promote it on social media. All things considered, they should have stayed at home.

It's immediately obvious who Östlund has in his crosshairs. While not a class warfare movie exactly, our director takes pleasure in attacking ideas of overly-pampered wealth, beauty as currency, and the toxicity and obliviousness to remotely normal problems an abundance of money creates. While not subtle themes, the movie delivers what it promises with increasingly ridiculous sequences, even if the laughs it inspires are never as big as you hope.

The couple's own problems soon pale in comparison with the troubles on the yacht. Others on the yacht include Woody Harrelson as the captain who spends nearly the entire trip drunk in his cabin (and his emergence turns out to be bad for everyone), and elderly couple (Oliver Ford Davies and Amanda Walker) who made their fortune in weapons, a pair of Russian oligarchs (Zlatko Buric and Sunnyi Melles), a stroke victim (Iris Berben) capable of only uttering a single nonsensical sentence in German, and a crew led by Vicki Berlin putting up with random requests from their pampered guests completely oblivious to the practicality of their requests or how their absurd demands may affect the working of the yacht.

At the end of a catastrophic night on the yacht, a collection from the crew and guests make it to a nearby island where dynamics begin to shift as one of the ship's cleaners (Dolly De Leon) takes command as the only one with any real survival skills. And, as you might expect, things get even crazier. The film spends an inordinate amount of time with our two models early on, focused on their relationship, prior to moving on to the yacht and events of the rest of the film. Given that the main events of the film don't really start until the yacht is underway, when our lovers fade into a larger ensemble, the early section of the film does feel a bit overlong. While humorous, the lack of big laughs in Triangle of Sadness is also notable for a satire which, more often than not, chooses being clever over being funny.

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• Title: Triangle of Sadness
• IMDb: link