Triangle of Sadness is a phrase used by the beauty industry, referring to the line-prone space between the eyebrows; a spot that can be smoothed away provided one has enough money for Botox and fillers. Palme d’Or-winning director Ruben Östlund first encountered the term through his wife Sina, a fashion photographer.
“It was from my wife’s friend,” Östlund says. “She was dating someone who was working in surgery in LA. So she was sitting across the table and having a romantic dinner and all of a sudden this guy says, oh, I can see you have a deep triangle of sadness. What happened with your life?
“And he was touching the area here between eyebrows. And he says no worries; we can fix that with Botox in 15 minutes. I can’t explain it more than that, but that’s where it comes from. Maybe it says something about the dark kind of humour they have in the beauty industry.”
We were always pushing the limits of things. So that’s just in my backbone when I’m making movies
There are no reports of a second date.
With similar dark humour, Neon, the US distributor of Östlund’s new film – also called Triangle of Sadness – is giving away free Botox with theatre tickets.
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Earlier this year, Östlund won the top prize at this year’s Cannes film festival for his raucous new comedy – an unusual genre for a Cannes winner – parachuting him into an elite group of two-time Palme d’Or winners that includes Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Haneke, Shohei Imamura, Bille August, the Dardenne brothers, Emir Kusturica, Alf Sjöberg, and Ken Loach.
None of these other auteurs, however, were decorated for an epic projectile vomiting sequence in which billionaires on a sinking cruise ship are tossed and rolled in their own sick.
“Shooting it was not gross in any way because you had all these tubes and wires,” says the filmmaker. “You could push a button and it would come out of the actor’s mouth without them knowing. It was only after I did a test screening that I thought: my God, people are reacting very strongly on this. But you know, I originally come from ski films. And when you were shooting skiing, then it was always about doing something more spectacular than anyone has ever done before.
One of the ship staff was telling me that in the master bedroom, they used to have a Jacuzzi, and the problem with that was that whoever was staying in the master bedroom very often wanted to fill up the Jacuzzi with champagne
“We were always pushing the limits of things. So that’s just in my backbone when I’m making movies. If I’m going to do a vomiting scene on a ship, I wanted to have the most vomiting that we have ever had on screen.”
Triangle of Sadness maintains this uproarious sensibility throughout. Taking cues from the socially awkward humour of Östlund’s previous cringe comedies The Square and Force Majeure, the new film opens with an excruciating argument between two social influencers (Harris Dickinson and the late Charlbi Dean) over the splitting of a restaurant bill.
[ Palme D’Or winner The Square: a funny, eccentric and baggy piece of workOpens in new window ]
“Everything about social media has been so normalised,” says Östlund. “But I think the one thing that maybe a person like me was surprised by was branded couples. I had never really heard about the concept of branded couples. And then I heard the story of a model that was at the peak of his career, but he was starting to get bald.
“He had done a perfume campaign that he got very famous for. And the agent told him: ‘Okay, so you maybe have two more years in this industry’. And the drop for him was very big because he was working as a car mechanic before he became a model. And the agent said: ‘If you get together with a famous girlfriend then we can rebrand you.’ I’m at an age where I thought: ‘What about love?’ But when you play the film for a younger generation, it’s not unusual that even the most private relationships are economic or transactional.”
I didn’t know that we humans can behave in such a bizarre way as [the] people on these cruises do
During this newspaper’s last encounter with Östlund, he described an amusing story about his communist parents hitchhiking around Ireland and accepting a lift from Jack Lynch and his wife, Taoiseach Jack Lynch and his wife Máirín. (All the passengers of the car got along famously.) Triangle of Sadness, a film that manages to turn Marx’s rallying cry “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” into a barbed punchline, follows the good-looking influencers on to a cruise, a voyage defined by the vagaries of pampered billionaires, including elderly British munitions tycoons. Many of their outrageous requests were inspired by real life incidents.
[ Force Majeure review: Pitiless, pessimistic, but funny | JDiff 2015Opens in new window ]
“I got the interested in the world of luxury cruises after my wife did a photo shoot of one of these luxury yachts,” Östlund says. “But when I started to do research, it was a very extreme world. I’ve never really heard anything like it. I didn’t know that we humans can behave in such a bizarre way as [the] people on these cruises do.
“One of the ship staff was telling me that in the master bedroom, they used to have a Jacuzzi, and the problem with that was that whoever was staying in the master bedroom very often wanted to fill up the Jacuzzi with champagne. At one point the guest wanted the Jacuzzi filled champagne and goldfish. After that, they moved the Jacuzzi out from the master bedroom because it was creating such bad behaviour among the billionaires.”
I think they’re great things about the market economy. And I think there are great things about socialism
There’s even more fun to be found in a script that repeatedly pitches a communist American captain (Woody Harrelson) against a capitalist Russian oligarch (Zlatko Buric). Their lively, drunken debates pre-shadow a storm and shipwrecking that leaves the privileged few at the mercy of the ship’s former chambermaid, Abigail (Dolly De Leon). As the only survivor with fishing skills, the increasingly tyrannical Abigail swiftly assumes power.
“My parents were communists,” says Östlund. “And my mother is still a member of the Communist Party. But my brother became a right-wing liberal. So at home, we had loud political debates. I would say they are not as idealistic as the debates between the captain and the oligarch.
“But when I was growing up during the 80s, it felt like we were looking at the world from a Western perspective, as liberal capitalists, and from the east, the perspective came from socialists and communists. And that both these were bashing their heads against each other. I think I am somewhere in between. I think they’re great things about the market economy. And I think there are great things about socialism.”
Östlund’s impeccably plotted triptych required five years to write and a considerable slog in the editing suite. His first English-language script is also his most expensive production to date.
“I think the producers did a fantastic job combining European money with American money. It’s hard to combine these two systems,” he says. “But it was still a difficult film to make. When I was editing, I had kind of a problem introducing new characters all the time.
“When you were reading the script it worked quite well, but then the first version of the film was four hours long. I had to make it more dynamic. So I talked to Michael Haneke and he said, the sooner you introduce Abigail on the island, the better. I took that advice. I think it was right.”
That really says something about the modern human being and how dependent we are on distracting ourselves
Östlund has said there is “always an empty space” following the death of Charlbi Dean. The actor and model died suddenly, aged 32, after contracting a virus last August.
“I think talking about her performance is a way to pay tribute to her,” says Östlund. " I really want her family and her friends to be proud of her and to remember her in a great way. I am very proud that I got the chance to work with her and get to know her. Charlbi was a team player. She was not an individualist. She was not the person that she was portraying in all. It’s just very, very sad that she is missing out on the kind of reception that we get.”
Arriving between Force Majeure and ahead of the director’s next aeroplane-set film, The Entertainment System Is Down, Triangle of Sadness, well, triangulates a trilogy of holidays-from-hell pictures.
“When we are flying on an aeroplane, what do we click on?” he says. “We’re looking at films and artwork. I made Force Majeure because you look at an image of a ski resort and it looks so free. I made Triangle of Sadness because you look at the luxury world of fashion and a cruise ship and a deserted island and you think: I want to spend time in all of these environments. But the next film was also inspired by two sociological experiments.
“In one of them, they had asked people to be in a room and do nothing. And the test subjects felt this was horrible, even though the time limit for the test was only 15 minutes. So they added a feature where the test person had the possibility if they wanted to push a button and give themselves an electrical shock.
“The shock was very painful, but not harmful, and over 40 per cent of the people pushed that button rather than just being [in] that room, doing nothing. That really says something about the modern human being and how dependent we are on distracting ourselves.”
Triangle of Sadness opens is released on Friday, October 28th
