Don’t lose your lunch at the first trail­er for the puke-flecked Tri­an­gle of Sadness

Back at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val this past May, the uproar­i­ous class com­e­dy Tri­an­gle of Sad­ness net­ted direc­tor Ruben Östlund an impres­sive sec­ond Palme d’Or, mak­ing him one of only three film­mak­ers to have earned the top prize for back-to-back fea­tures. (Pre­sum­ably, he’s now in a group chat with Bille August and Michael Haneke.) As such, his lat­est fea­ture has quite a rep­u­ta­tion to live up to, and its mar­ket­ing has met the chal­lenge with atten­tion-grab­bing provo­ca­tions befit­ting the film at hand.

Hot on the heels of an offi­cial poster depict­ing a mon­eyed crone pro­jec­tile-vom­it­ing liq­uid gold comes the trail­er for Östlund’s sea­far­ing satire, a clip that also teas­es the lurch­ing inevitabil­i­ty of sick­ness on chop­py waters. The puke-a-thon cen­ter­piece of the film also makes up the core of a trail­er that touch­es upon key themes of wealth, beau­ty, and grotes­querie with­out reveal­ing too much in the way of plot.

We meet Carl (Har­ris Dick­in­son) and Yaya (Charl­bi Dean), a pair of mod­els and influ­encers tak­ing their per­son­al brands onboard a gar­gan­tu­an ocean lin­er doomed to sink and strand a hand­ful of pas­sen­gers in parts unknown. As every­thing sinks into the briny deep, a Russ­ian manure mag­nate (Zlatko Burić) has a cou­ple of laughs with the drunk­en cap­tain of the ves­sel (Woody Har­rel­son). What we don’t see, the real meat of the film, is what hap­pens on the desert­ed island once capa­ble cus­to­di­al staffer Abi­gail (Dol­ly de Leon) has domin­ion over the help­less one-per­centers she used to serve.

In her review out of Cannes, our own Han­nah Strong con­veyed a mixed and mea­sured reac­tion, writ­ing that ​“it’s cer­tain­ly an enjoy­able watch, but not quite as well-exe­cut­ed as Force Majeure or The Square. Here, Östlund ges­tures towards big ques­tions about the gen­der and class divi­sions, but always stops short of mak­ing any tru­ly bold statements.”

Tri­an­gle of Sad­ness can be fair­ly called a lot of things, but sub­tle isn’t one of them, and the trail­er fol­lows suit. To the strains of the time­less Burt Bacharach com­po­si­tion ​“What the World Needs Now,” the full atroc­i­ty of the rich and (wannabe) famous is put on dis­play for our delight and revul­sion. Whether that’s side-split­ting or stom­ach-turn­ing will come down to taste.

Tri­an­gle of Sad­ness comes to cin­e­mas in the US on 7 Octo­ber, and then the UK on 28 October.