Triangle of Sadness | Little White Lies

Tri­an­gle of Sadness

26 Oct 2022

Shirtless young man with flowers in hair holding smartphone.
Shirtless young man with flowers in hair holding smartphone.
4

Anticipation.

All aboard the good ship Östlund!

4

Enjoyment.

Stomach-churning scenes abound.

4

In Retrospect.

A fun, but fairly smug, voyage.

Swedish provo­ca­teur Ruben Östlund takes us aboard the lux­u­ry cruise from hell in his lat­est over-the-top satire.

There’s some­thing about the idea of float­ing on the open sea with a bunch of strangers that feels vague­ly omi­nous, and giv­en the rep­u­ta­tion cruis­es have as breed­ing grounds for stom­ach bugs and poten­tial death traps, it’s sur­pris­ing we don’t see more films that take place abroad them. Good news, then, for any­one who ever read David Fos­ter Wallace’s A Sup­pos­ed­ly Fun Thing I’ll Nev­er Do Again’ and felt seen – Ruben Östlund shares your appre­hen­sion about ocean-based holidays.

The lat­est brash provo­ca­tion from the direc­tor of Force Majeure and The Square con­cerns the pas­sen­gers aboard a lux­u­ry cruise ship and charts the series of unfor­tu­nate events that throw them into dis­ar­ray. The self-avowed Marx­ist cap­tain, Thomas (Woody Har­rel­son), is drunk, a storm is clos­ing in, and there are some unsavoury-look­ing char­ac­ters lurk­ing on a pass­ing boat.

Nev­er­the­less, job­bing mod­el Carl (Har­ris Dick­in­son) and his influ­encer girl­friend Yaya (Charl­bi Dean) are mak­ing the most of a free hol­i­day. Their fel­low pas­sen­gers include a Russ­ian manure entre­pre­neur (Zlatko Burić) and a Ger­man woman who’s recent­ly suf­fered a stroke ren­der­ing her unable to say any­thing except the words In den Wolken”. If Carl and Yaya feel out of place, this is super­seded by a lin­ger­ing argu­ment about their rela­tion­ship (which com­pris­es the film’s short open­ing chap­ter), in which Carl calls Yaya out for nev­er pay­ing for din­ner when they’re togeth­er. He express­es a desire to defy tra­di­tion­al gen­der roles with­in their rela­tion­ship, though Yaya seems a lit­tle scep­ti­cal about the suggestion.

Two men in formal wear, one in a dark suit and the other in a white military-style uniform, standing in an indoor setting.

Luck­i­ly for them, cir­cum­stance leads to an imme­di­ate oppor­tu­ni­ty for some gen­der role rever­sal, as they soon find them­selves ship­wrecked and dis­cov­er that the only com­pe­tent mem­ber of their group is Abi­gail (Dol­ly De Leon), a Fil­ipino toi­let clean­er on the ship. Abi­gail, sick and tired of deal­ing with rude pas­sen­gers, is hearti­ly pleased to final­ly be the one in charge.

Östlund delights in jux­ta­pos­ing his big polit­i­cal themes with toi­let humour – the amount of vom­it and fae­cal mat­ter in this film real­ly can’t be under­stat­ed – and the three-act struc­ture leaves the film back­loaded, as it is at its most enjoy­able once the crew and guests are ship­wrecked and start to live out an off-kil­ter ver­sion of Lord of the Flies’.

Even if the sto­ry­line needs work, Östlund’s visu­al cre­ativ­i­ty delights in a scene where the cam­era appears to move with the rock­ing of the ship on chop­py waters. Dick­in­son is superb as the ide­al­is­tic but emp­ty-head­ed Carl, who decides the best way to sur­vive is to find some­one to pro­vide for him. Dick­in­son off­sets his indis­putable hand­some­ness by play­ing up Carl’s crotch­eti­ness – he’s an expres­sive per­former, and in the purse of his lips or fur­row of his brow he can fill in the blanks between the lines of Östlund’s broad-strokes script.

It’s cer­tain­ly an enjoy­able watch, though Östlund ges­tures towards big ques­tions about gen­der and class divi­sions with­out mak­ing any tru­ly bold state­ments. Instead, his char­ac­ters noo­dle around inside increas­ing­ly out­landish sce­nar­ios, and the even­tu­al end­ing feels rather abrupt after two hours of build-up.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive prints, essays, film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.