Movie Details
| Title: | Triangle of Sadness | |
| Director: | Ruben Ostlund | |
| Year: | 2022 | |
| Genre: | Dark Comedy | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 03.18.23 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (2)
- Force Majeure
- The Square
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 03.18.23 | Internet | The second half of a movies-i-missed-at-Fantastic-Fest double feature. Force Majeure was a pleasant surprise when i saw it at Fantastic Fest. It's a decent movie built on an amazing scene where a family having a meal on the deck of a ski resort has a close call with an avalanche and the father completely ditches his wife and kids to save himself when he thinks the snow is going to overtake the deck. The avalanche subsides and everything goes back to normal but the rest of the movie is emotional fallout for the husband, his family, his friends, etc. I believe it was remade starring Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus and with Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (familiar to fans of The Way Way Back), but I think that's pretty terrible casting for this kind of black comedy and it's no surprise that nobody saw it, myself included. Anyway, Ostlund was back at the fest for his next movie The Square which sent up the world of modern art and had a weird story of an entitled guy finding himself meeting reality that he's not prepared for. My memories of the movie are pretty fragmented however because what I remember as the main story didn't have much to do with the stand-out scenes which involved a person suffering from Tourette's or the guy who did the ape movements for the Planet of the Apes movies taking his performance art too far in a dining room full of rich people. That one won the Palme D'Or at Canne but I dunno if it made waves here due to mainly non-english speaking cast. This movie feels like a lessons learned document about The Square. It's in English, it's just standout scenes without, like, a traditional narrative, bit it keeps the same kind of uncomfortable brutal humor of his other films. The result obviously worked since it not only won the Palme D'Or but also garnered a Best Picture Oscar nomination. In terms of Fantastic Fest, this was like a no-brainer to play. It matches the fest's sensibility perfectly, not to mention it's distributed by Neon which Tim League co-owns. In terms of the schedule, this would've been one of those movies that everyone knows will be good so it's a safe bet to see. For some more adventurous types they may skip it because they know they'll be able to see it. For people like me, it would be a must-see because the chance of it sucking is low and sitting through bad movies at a festival is its own kind of painful experience. The movie itself. I mostly thought it was ok while I was watching it, but I liked having seen it. The structure and pacing of each scene kept me in a place where I didn't know what the movie was until the start of the third act. Generally speaking, I enjoyed it more and more as the movie played out. The beginning argument with the elevator door had me fatigued, because both of Ostlund's previous movies were funny in a very stressful way and I thought if the whole movie are these two characters arguing with each other then I was in for a bad time. Thankfully, the movie opens up and becomes a clash between the tv shows Below Deck and Armando Iannucci's Avenue 5, with some Lord of the Flies thrown in for good measure. By the end I was having a moderately good time. Not as into it as The Menu, but I wound up not disliking this at all. SPOILERS AHEAD My favorite scene is probably everybody's favorite scene: The Captain's dinner. Very well done. In particular... I don't know if there were some fancy effects or if they really made the cast vomit because that did not look like they just put soup in their mouths. One shot in particular shows a poor lady expelling from both ends. It's such an effective shot! But I really hope they used some movie magic on that because to have to go through that in front of cameras would be tough! |
