Deborah Ross

Pure scorn without wit or insight: Triangle of Sadness reviewed

Ruben Ostlund's latest is billed as a ‘satirical black comedy’ but the targets are easy and it doesn’t say anything and I didn’t laugh once

Russian oligarch Dimitry (Zlatko Buric) and his mistress Ludmilla (Carolina Gynning) in Triangle of Sadness. Credit: © Plattform Produktion  
issue 29 October 2022

The latest film from Ruben Ostlund received an eight-minute standing ovation after its screening in Cannes and also won the festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or, and this has left me entirely baffled: what, the film I’ve just seen? The one where every scene is far too long? The one billed as a ‘satirical black comedy’ even though the targets are easy and it doesn’t say anything and I didn’t laugh once? That film? I should add, it’s not for the emetophobic. One of the scenes that goes on far too long involved so much vomiting that I could only watch the bottom 5 per cent of the screen. Ostlund needs someone like my mother in his life to tell him it’s not clever, it’s not funny, pack it in.

Ostlund has, it’s true, previously made two magnificent films: the earth-shattering Force Majeure about an avalanche in the French Alps and The Square, an art-world satire that also won the Palme d’Or, whatever that’s worth.

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