Tri­an­gle of Sadness

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.

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.