Cannes Film Festival: Triangle of Sadness, Fashionable Class Struggle

The team of Les Amandiers ©YesICannes.com

Swedish director Ruben Östlund presents Triangle of Sadness, a satirical comedy, brilliant and ferocious, of the international fortunate class where the roles of the protagonists are reversed in a staggering farce.

Cannes Film Festival 2022: Ruben Östlund must be crazy! But of the gentle madness that drives geniuses! After creating a stir with The Square, Palme d’Or in 2017, and Turist, Prix du jury Un certain regard in 2014, the Swedish director presents this year Triangle of Sadness, a very humorous satirical comedy about a wreck of ways of thinking. The French-Italian artist Valeria Bruni Tedeschi has made a name for herself at Cannes both as a performer and as a director. In Competition this year, Les Amandiers, her fifth feature film, pays tribute to Patrice Chéreau and the theatre school he directed from 1982.

Youth at Les Amandiers

With Les Amandiers, her fifth feature film, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi evokes her youth during the 1980s and pays a vibrant tribute to the founders of the Théâtre des Amandiers in Nanterre, Pierre Romans and Patrice Chéreau. The film is starring Louis Garrel and promising young actors such as Léna Garrel (Louis’ sister), Suzanne Lindon (daughter of Vincent Lindon and Sandrine Kiberlain) and Zoé Adjani (Isabelle’s niece) as well as Nadia Tereszkiewicz. The director talks about her theatrical training and the love of her youth.

Triangle of Sadness ©Fredrik-Wenzel ©Plattform

Equality in the couple, cradle of true love

The first part of Triangle of Sadness introduces two models Carl and Yaya. Yaya (Charlbi Dean) is already a star model when Carl (Harris Dickinson) goes on casting calls. During a casting session, Carl is asked to relax the triangle of sadness, which runs from the eyebrows to the root of the nose… But Carl doesn’t relax with his girlfriend, and tensions rise over the settlement of a dinner bill in a luxury restaurant that turns into an argument between the sliding doors of a hotel lift. Carl wants to banish the notion of money and gender in favour of equality in the couple, the cradle of true love.

Triangle of Sadness ©Fredrik-Wenzel ©Plattform

Wreck in the ways of… thinking

Yaya’s beauty, enhanced by her talent as an influencer, earns the young models a luxury cruise, and the couple embarks with passengers boasting unusual fortunes. The young girl shows off in various swimming costumes and poses, before a storm ruins the captain’s dinner and pirates cause the ship to sink. Some of the guests are stranded on a deserted island. On the beach, values are suddenly reversed: only the Filipino woman in charge of cleaning the toilets on the yacht knows how to fish and make fire. She becomes the captain!

Triangle of Sadness ©Fredrik-Wenzel ©Plattform

The Festival audience taken out of its comfort zone

With Triangle of Sadness, Ruben Östlund signs a comedy with carefully paced burlesque, in which even objects play a role during the storm. The egos of the self-important bourgeoisie are gradually shattered as the cruise becomes chaotic. Epic moment! While the toilets are overflowing, a hilarious back and forth match reverses the roles. With quotes from Lenin, Marx and Reagan, the American captain(Woody Harrelson) boasts Marxist reflexion while the Russian defends capitalism. Later, on the island, a new reversal: the cleaning lady sets up a matriarchy with sex slave to the men who have disdained her during her discreet existence. This is enough to overturn the ways of thinking and to take the Cannes Film Festival audience out of its comfort zone.