Oscar Contender Movie Review: TRIANGLE OF SADNESS

Warning: You will read the phrase “Vomit Scene” quite a few times in the next few paragraphs.

The Swedish film, TRIANGLE OF SADNESS, won the Palm D’or (Best Picture) at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival and it’s easy to see why for it is a biting satire of the ultra-rich and the vaccuous-ness of celebrity and the “look at me” self-absorbed “influencer” culture brought on by social media.

I only wish that Oscar Nominated Director Ruben Ostlund (who also wrote the screenplay of this film that is also nominated for the Best Picture Oscar) would have gotten to his points quicker and then not sit there and beat those points into the ground over and over again.

This film is divided into three parts:

A). Before The Vomit Scene

B). The Vomit Scene

C). After The Vomit Scene

While the first and 3rd parts of this film are overly long and talky, the middle portion of this film - the vomit scene - is worth the price of admission.

I’ll cut Ostlund some slack in the first part of the movie where he spends a Looooong time setting up the 2 players - SuperModels Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charibi Dean) - through whom the audience views the proceedings. It is an overly long look at two not very charismatic, self-serving Social Media influencers that cannot connect with each other in TRW (the real world, to use Social Media parlance). Through their abilities as Social Media influencers, they are invited to join the ulta-rich on a Luxury yacht cruise captained by a drunk, Communist-American who is “over it”.

The first part of this movie seemed long to begin with and then we get an even longer time getting to better understand the other “ultra-rich” participants in this cruise and the crew tha

t attends to their every needs. It is a pretty one-sided look as the “Ultra-Rich” are whitewashed as “out of touch”, while the blue collar crew are whitewashed as “in touch”.

I was ready to give up on this movie but then the Captain (Woody Harrelson, who breathes new life into this film when he finally arrives on screen) and “The Vomit Scene” (and it’s aftermath) happens.

Osltund is not subtle about the goings-on in this film as the “vomit scene” serves the purpose of stripping the façade of the “ultra-rich” to show that there is emptiness inside, driving home the point that money doesn’t buy happiness. The whole middle part of this film (the “vomit scene” and it’s aftermath) is very effective and brings strong emotional resonance.

Unfortunately, Ostlund cannot stick the landing with the final part of what is really a trilogy of short films and thus the effectiveness of the middle of this movie is lost in an overly-talky, overly-ambiguous finale.

A stunning middle of the movie keeps THE TRIANGLE OF SADNESS afloat, but it is weighted down by a first part and a last part that are overly long and not nearly to the level of the now infamous, “Vomit Scene”.

Letter Grade: B-

6 Stars (out of 10) and you can take that to the Bank(ofMarquis)