On the captain’s desk, a book that could lend its title to the film—Noam Chomsky’s How the World Works. From a near documentary first part to a clumsy Lord of the Flies, The Triangle of Sadness doesn’t add much to the trite derision of the obliviously rich, nor uses a desert island in any particularly original way. A setup, Ruben Östlund himself points out, that has been often used in literature and cinema for how it effectively reduces human interactions to a primal level, shifting the received weight of currencies, and annihilating hierarchies. But the premises are only as good as the first twenty minutes of the film. A silly interview at a casting session in a fashion photography studio, a gender squabble over a restaurant bill payment—Östlund immediately confirms to have a knack for contriving a narrative through a series of cringingly awkward moments. Like in Force Majeure and The Square, it isn’t much the social criticism that drives the story as the behaviour of people outside of their comfort zone. Except this time, his sadistic scalpel doesn’t dare as deep, or shine as much. Frustratingly, the promising vibe set by the first half soon fades away. Things start to wobble during the grotesque captain’s dinner scene and go souther once on the shore—the few brilliant passages being watered down by unremarkable jokes.
Of a similar fate seem to suffer the aesthetics. However reminiscent of The Square, there is something attractive to the stylised rarefaction of the opening. Cruise onwards, the image gets impersonally glossy and garish, the colours abusively graded. If this is supposed to be an allusion to the unreal world most of the characters are coming from or mockingly evoke cheap television shows of the likes of I’m a Celebrity, I guess I don’t find it rooted enough to buy it. Unless, I wonder retrospectively, the satire is meant to aim elsewhere, perhaps at those who are relentlessly being indoctrinated to see that world through such filters so we can desire it—us.
Although Des’ree Life brought me back to my university years giving me the exact same experience Anton Ego has when he tastes little Remy’s ratatouille, the soundtrack picks are terrible and occasionally misplaced—like the one that takes the beautiful ending scene into the credits as if to make sure, needlessly, it looks like one.
