The Punxsutawney Spirit

'Triangle of Sadness': Biting social satire delights Cannes

- By Jake Coyle AP Film Writer

CANNES, France (AP) — Fashion models, Instagram influencer­s and Russian oligarchs collide on a yacht — and some very extreme sickness ensues — in Ruben Östlund's “Triangle of Sadness,” a social satire that had viewers at the Cannes Film Festival in hysterics.

The Swedish filmmaker's latest, co-starring Woody Harrelson as a Marxist boat captain, has made one of the biggest splashes at this year's festival. At its premiere Saturday evening, there were such waves of laughter and applause that Östlund on Sunday compared it to a crowd at a soccer match.

Östlund has already found an internatio­nal audience for movies that take an uproarious, uncomforta­ble aim at money, masculinit­y and other big social targets in films like the Alpine marital drama “Force Majeure” (remade as “Downhill,” with Julia Louis Dreyfus and Will Ferrell) and the art-world satire “The Square,” which won the Palme d'Or top prize at Cannes in 2017.

But in his first Englishlan­guage film, and with a budget twice that of “The Square,” Östlund wanted to go even further with his particular brand of “rollercoas­ter for adults” cinema.

“I wanted to do something that’s worth leaving your home and leaving your screens, leaving the streaming services you have at home,” Östlund said ahead of the film's premiere.

“I didn’t want to get stuck in the art house part of cinema-making. I was really looking into that I felt I enjoyed watching myself. And the project I was thinking about had a wild set-up.”

“Triangle of Sadness," which is playing in competitio­n for this year's Palme d'Or, is named after a term in the fashion world for a triangle-shaped crease between the eyebrows. The first third of Östlund's film follows a male model played by Harris Dickinson and his influencer girlfriend portrayed by Charlbi Dean who argue over picking up a check after dinner.

Other riffs on fashion follow, but “Triangle of Sadness” moves into another gear in its second act, when they take a trip on a luxury yacht captained by a drunk socialist (Harrelson). The boat's uber rich tourists include weapons makers and a Russian fertilizer magnate SOD\HG E\ =ODWNR %XULü

“Triangle of Sadness” reaches a comic crescendo when the seas turn rough, and an elaborate dinner ends up a farce of vomiting — and worse — while the captain and oligarch debate politics.

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