It’s hard to believe from their perfect faces on their Instagram accounts, but influencers like movie stars are still human beings. They have encrusted corners of their eyelids in the morning, go to the toilet… These are the kind of details that are good to remember when, capturing your reflection in the mirror, you find yourself sighing. This explaining that, there is something basely — but undeniably — pleasurable in seeing the ultra-beautiful and/or ultra-rich characters in the film Triangle of Sadness (Without filter in VF), Palme d’Or at Cannes, being humiliated and belittled.
We follow a couple of models, giving her the cachet (Harris Dickinson), she recognized, in addition to being a popular influencer (Charlbi Dean, who died suddenly at 32), during a stay aboard a “ superyacht”. The cruise brings together a handpicked group, but as colorful as possible: a Russian oligarch and his wife who thinks they are “close to the little people”, a couple of English arms dealers, a drunken captain who likes to quote Marx…
Scriptwriter and director Ruben Östlund takes malicious pleasure in dragging all these dreadful “beautiful people” onto stormy waters where vomit and excrement will soon mingle.
“The idea goes back a few years already,” explains the Swedish filmmaker, with whom we were able to discuss on September 13, at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).
It was even before the movie The Squareanother satire, also winner of the Palme d’Or, and which flamethrowers the art industry and those who frequent it.
“At the time, I was doing the promotional tour for my film force majeure [encore une satire, très noire, où un homme révèle sans le vouloir à sa famille sa couardise et son égoïsme à la suite d’une avalanche]. I met my future partner, who is a fashion photographer. In contact with her, I became interested in the world of fashion, but also in beauty as a bargaining chip; how beauty, as much as money and education, can open doors. »
The more the filmmaker learned about said universe, the more what he learned inspired him, starting with a rather unique male-female inequity.
“I was fascinated by the fact that male models are much less considered and earn much less than women: they earn about a quarter. This is an extremely rare case. And they have to deal with powerful gay men who can help them or hurt them, just like what women have to deal with in mainstream society. »
The intoxication of power
The film is divided into three separate acts. During the first, we get acquainted with Carl and Yaya, in public, during a dinner where the tensions related to money burst, then in private, during a brilliant session of stockings the masks where Yaya sums up to Carl, with unstoppable pragmatism, the ins and outs of their relationship.
In the second act comes the first idyllic, then nightmarish cruise. Due to a whim of a traveler, a domino effect culminates in widespread food poisoning, with vomiting projections and diarrhea worthy of a Jackson Pollock. In this respect, this bias to show everything did not fail to make Cannes react. Obviously that was the goal.
“As soon as the screenplay was written, I knew that I wanted to go much further than what the public would expect. I wanted the public to end up hoping that I would leave these “poor” rich people alone. Except that if you limit yourself to what is expected, it’s uninteresting, while if you go ten times further, something happens. Suddenly, we fall into the unexpected: it becomes both horrible and hilarious, simultaneously. I am a filmmaker who likes to push the limits. »
Finally, in the third act, we are transported to a desert island where the survivors come to create a new social order, the only person capable of catching fish being one of the servants. Chambermaid ignored by everyone the day before, here she is a dictator.
Because in Triangle of Sadnessrich or poor, right or left, no one is immune to the intoxication of power.
“My mother is on the left and experienced communism. As a child, I always expected the whole world to become communist and that in the process, all individuals would become equal, says the 48-year-old filmmaker. Only here, history teaches us that power corrupts, and that the fight for fairness is destined to be perpetual. Above all, I didn’t want to offer yet another story where the poor are necessarily kind and sincere, and where the rich are necessarily mean and deceitful. In the end, it all depends on the position you occupy within the structure of the moment: that’s really what the film is about. »
In the third act, developments and decor helping, we obviously think of Lina Wertmüller’s masterpiece Towards an unusual destiny on the blue waves of summer, in which a hateful heiress who delights in denigrating the working class is forced to change her attitude when she finds herself shipwrecked with a communist sailor. Although here, it would be rather Towards a laxative destiny on the blue waves of summer.
“From the start, I wanted to try to see what would happen if these people were suddenly left on their own, deprived of all this social structure that benefits them. Honestly, I only saw Lina Wertmüller’s film shortly before the shooting. I was showing my script to various people, and an American producer suggested I watch this film. I found it absolutely brilliant. She managed a very entertaining film, and very intellectual at the same time. However, I admit that I prefer my idea of having a maid at the top of the social pyramid, once on the island. »
Master Godard
The luxury cruise and the paradise island, Ruben Östlund had in mind to use them as a backdrop long before he even had a sketch of a story.
” As for force majeure, which takes place in a ski resort, that is to say the kind of place that can easily lend itself to a light comedy, I wanted to set the action of this film in a pleasant place, conducive to recklessness, but to better, in contrast, formulate a more… cerebral reflection. Today, we have just learned of the death of Jean-Luc Godard. However, Godard had a genius for attracting the public with one thing, while developing content that he considered important. Take Sympathy for the Devil [ou One + One ; 1968], in which he inserts all sorts of political vignettes: he lures people with the music of the Rolling Stones, then he delivers his message to them. It inspires me enormously. »
We will never know if the director of Contempt would have appreciated Triangle of Sadness, but on the other hand we can be certain of this: the show to which Ruben Östlund invites us must be seen to be believed. This is a compliment.
The film Triangle of Sadness will take
the poster in original version on October 14,
in VO s.-tf on October 21, then in VF on October 28.