![]() ![]() And yet, when the two are at a restaurant and the check comes, she expects Carl to pay the bill. Yaya (the lovely Charlbi Dean, who sadly died earlier this year), is the more successful of the pair. We see Carl (Harris Dickinson), who is buff, blond, and handsome, fail to impress the casting agents while auditioning for a modelling gig one of them asks him to “relax your triangle of sadness”-the furrowed area between his brows, which people often smooth out with Botox. The film opens on the story of Carl and Yaya, a model/influencer couple. “Triangle of Sadness” is both the mashed potatoes and the Monet. But, unlike this gambit, which can feel inexplicable-Why mashed potatoes? Why Monet?-Östlund earns our attention with his transparent tack, and by making an extremely entertaining, even poignant movie. ![]() It’s a tactic worthy of 2022, a time in which climate-change activists attempt to apprise the public of their cause by tossing mashed potatoes at a Monet. In comparison, the political message in “Triangle of Sadness” is like a hammer to the head. One could watch “The White Lotus” and conceivably ignore its social-satire element, revelling instead in its beautiful scenery, sexy couplings, and plot intricacies. And it felt good to see Östlund take this to task brutally and hilariously. The willful obliviousness of the ultra-wealthy is something that we see and experience and become numb to on a daily basis. But, as I watched, I kept thinking to myself, Show me the lie. It’s true that the movie is somewhat of an obvious, too-symmetrical parable, with the weak and indigent coming to haunt those who have done everything in their power to oppress and then repress them. My colleague Richard Brody has suggested that the movie engages in “political bombast” and “targeted demagogy,” missing the mark of a subtler statement with its easy sloganeering and facile reversals. The guests are, at this point, virtually swimming in their own poop.Ī frequent critique of “Triangle of Sadness,” which won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes festival, is that it’s too on the nose. “While you’re swimming in abundance, the rest of the world is drowning in misery,” he rants. Meanwhile, the boat’s drunken captain, a self-proclaimed Marxist (Woody Harrelson, having a great time), commandeers the P.A. (It’s probably the most vomit that I’ve seen onscreen since the pie-contest scene in Rob Reiner’s 1986 movie, “Stand by Me.”) The scene is set to a blaring track from the hardcore Swedish band Refused, with the coup de grâce arriving as the toilets on the yacht overflow, sending rivers of runny excrement coursing through the hallways and down the boat’s steps, drenching the passengers. Östlund takes his time with this episode, showing the chunks fly, for maximum comic and gross-out effect. A storm pummels the ship while the guests are eating dinner, turning the yacht into a de-facto vomitorium, as seasick passengers chase haute-cuisine delicacies and flutes of champagne with spots of projectile hurling. ![]() Halfway through the film, the shit literally hits the fan. The movie follows a group of wealthy Europeans being waited on hand and foot as they vacation on a superyacht, until a series of disasters, natural and otherwise, brings the class tensions simmering beneath the surface to a violent fever pitch. But “Triangle of Sadness,” the new black comedy from the Swedish director Ruben Östlund, might be the one to go the hardest. Some of the shows, particularly the scripted dramas that whisk their characters away to some kind of high-end resort-Hulu’s “Nine Perfect Strangers,” HBO’s “ The White Lotus”-have been especially scathing. Astor’s Four Hundred period-porn series, “The Gilded Age.” On Bravo and Netflix, a whole slew of reality series have examined the one per cent’s exacting demands in everything from real estate (“ Selling Sunset”) to luxury yachting (the “Below Deck” franchise). On HBO, we’ve had Jesse Armstrong’s “ Succession,” a romp about a Murdochian family, and Julian Fellowes’s enjoyably stately Mrs. There have been several cultural texts recently that depict the coddled super-rich and the underclass that scrambles to serve them in exchange for crumbs of their plenty.
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