Always Good Movies

Direction: Ruben Östlund
Country: France / Sweden / other

Palme D’Or winner, Triangle of Sadness, is a step down in the Swedish director Ruben Östlund's filmography, which includes Force Majeure (2014) and The Square (2017). This heavy-handed, neoliberal satirical comedy about inequality and class gaps is his first English-language film, and comes pelted with dark humor and irony. However, after a great start, it ended up grubby and silly.

In the first chapter, we are introduced to models and influencers, Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean), who show a bit of their personalities. On the passable second section, they embark on a luxury cruise marked by a captain’s dinner that won’t let you escape the nauseating wobbliness of repetition. Yet, the best sequences for me involved the interaction between a Russian capitalist who sells fertilizer (Zlatko Burić) and the alcoholic Marxist captain (Woody Harrelson) who despises each and every wealthy passenger on board. Some great dialogues are nearly absurdist at this phase. The third and last chapter is a complete disaster, sinking down the whole film in a blink of an eye.

If we're making picks for the most eccentric and anarchic flicks of the year, my enthusiastic vote goes to the hyped up Triangle of Sadness, even if the final result is not particularly satisfying. In this case, Östlund wasn’t smart enough to take some possible good ideas to better conclusions, preferring a cinema that is coarse, drastic and with no consequence. It can be funny at times, though.

Directed by Ruben Ostlund
Country: Sweden / other

Swedish director Ruben Ostlund bows to ambition in “The Square”, a satirical drama put together with exquisite shots and packed with characters whose incredible behaviors range from comical to earnest to contrived, and sometimes a combination of those. Even with his filmmaking style transfigured for this work, Ostlund didn’t achieve the emotional fierceness of his first couple of dramas, “Involuntary” and “Play”, as well as the objectivity of his latest “Force Majeure”.

Nonetheless, the big winner of Cannes has been conquering many fans with a semi-articulate fusion of deadpan humor, weirdness, and unexpectedness while focusing on themes such as global tolerance and responsiveness toward others, guilt and honor, ego and defeat, and both the influence and the potential dangers of the communication in general, and the social media in particular.

Deploying clean, Nordic-style visuals, Ostlund attempts to examine modern life in our days, with all the personal, professional, and technological implications associated with a civilized community. However, over the course of its drifting 2.5 hours, the film embraces a few outlandish situations that keep oscillating between morally disturbing and irreverently ludicrous. It’s like finding an intersection point between the social mordancy of Roy Andersson's comedy-dramas and the lightest version of Quentin Dupioux’s absurdities.

The story was partly inspired by an authentic art installation that both the filmmaker and the renowned producer, Kalle Bolman, had made, and develops into the multiple crises in the life of Christian (Claes Bang), the hypocrite chief curator of a major Swedish art museum. When not working on the publicity of a brand new installation entitled ‘The Square’, a piece described as ‘a sanctuary of trust and caring where, within it, we all share equal rights and obligations’, Christian is taking care of his two daughters or is attempting to locate his stolen cell phone with the help of a geeky employee or is having hot if casual sex with Anne (Elisabeth Moss), a weird interviewer who lives with a chimpanzee and insists on collecting the man's condom after having fun. Among a few unexpected scenes, including a man with Tourette's syndrome disturbing an interview and a terrified woman screaming for help in the middle of the street, there is one that deserves to be highlighted, involving an extremist performance artist named Oleg (Terry Notary) who, pretending to be a wild ape, actually attacks people during a museum’s meeting.

Regardless its long duration and wacky side, there are genius moves and several engrossing parts in “The Square”, a film that pushes boundaries by infusing lifelike sequences occasionally peppered with surreal allure.