Kritiken

It seems to me that as Östlund’s ridicule grows more barbed, his aim grows less acute. His targets have become broader, ripe for pricking, while his projectiles never fully penetrate the surfaces... Instead of skipping lightly over rough seas, Triangle of Sadness bobs to shore like a floating sarcophagus.

With “Triangle of Sadness,” Östlund is returning to form, with all the strengths and flaws his now-distinctive narrative style entails... If Östlund’s movies lack discipline — if his films overstay their welcome, become baggier, blowzier and more tiresome as they round the two-hour mark — they still leave the viewer grateful that somebody out there is engaged with a world that can be at least remotely described as real.

It’s possible to admire Triangle of Sadness without liking it very much... [The film] definitely looks like money. But it feels like a luxury item, a picture whose payoff isn’t as grand as you might have hoped. Östlund’s gifts are dazzling. If only he knew when to stop giving.

There are undeniably sharp dialogue exchanges and entertaining storytelling twists in [Triangle of Sadness] ...and yet some of it, especially in the final act, all starts to feel redundant... Still, if “Triangle of Sadness” falls short of greatness, it lives comfortably on the tier of goodness, even as it unpacks such bad, bad behavior.

Triangle of Sadness seems hemmed in by its tastefulness — which feels strange to say about a movie whose central scene is a literal shitstorm, but this is precisely what merits the red flag. If not for that scene, how far would the movie appear to go? ...The actors try their best, but Östlund’s insistent conceptual droning overtakes them.

The interactions between [the haves and have-nots] — or lack thereof — are intended to be funny and pointed, but the protracted satire falls flat, particularly in the wake of recent eviscerations like “The White Lotus” and, of course, the aforementioned “Parasite.” When the Captain’s Dinner finally arrives and Östlund opens the floodgates, the farce has worn out its welcome.

Immersive, volatile and innately entertaining... [Triangle of Sadness] is a stellar film that hits a rare sweet spot as both mainstream, accessible entertainment, and also an undeniably incisive piece of cultural commentary.

This, in the end, is a very bad movie, executed with enough visual polish and surface cleverness to fool the Cannes jurors, something Ostlund has done twice... The elaborately constructed, meandering plots of “Triangle of Sadness” and “The Square” purport to expose the hypocrisies and contradictions of contemporary life, but they are edifices of complacency, clever advertisements for the status quo.

[Triangle of Sadness] is a movie of targeted demagogy that pitches its facile political stances to the preconceptions of the art-house audience; far from deepening those ideas or challenging those assumptions, it flatters the like-minded viewership while swaggering with the filmmaker’s presumption of freethinking, subversive audacity.

[Triangle of Sadness] may be [Östlund's] least subtle film... but it's also his most absurdly entertaining... In a somber, often underwhelming season of would-be arthouse hits, the movie is a bona-fide trip: not the funhouse mirror we need for these ridiculous times, maybe, but one we deserve.

[A] handsomely grotesque satire... exceedingly uncomfortable and undeniably entertaining... The ideas about class consciousness aren’t anything that a college freshman isn’t already well-versed in. But even when the movie starts quoting Marx, it’s done with a wink and amid a deluge of bodily fluids.

Östlund’s contempt for the monied elite is palpable but so is his inability to move beyond mockery to any kind of substantive critique, much less to advance a vision for a better society... The problem for Triangle of Sadness is that Östlund’s pessimism ultimately leads the film toward a self-negating dead end in its allegory-heavy final act.