---
title: "Triangle of Sadness"
year: 2022
kind: "film"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/triangle-of-sadness"
fi1m_score: 66
critics_score: 65
critics_reviews: 26
published: "2026-09-20T08:47:35.188326+00:00"
updated: "2026-09-20T08:47:45.268815+00:00"
region: "US"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Triangle of Sadness (2022)

Directed by Ruben Östlund · 2h 27m · MPA R · Comedy, Drama

**Fi1m score: 66** · Critics 65 from 26 reviews

*In a sentence:* Twenty minutes of billionaires being sick into their dinner, and it is easily the best thing in the film

> Ruben Östlund’s comedy about the super-rich contains one sequence, a captain’s dinner in a storm, as funny as anything we have seen in years. Around it sits a long, blunt film that repeats a point it made in the first ten minutes.

## Synopsis

Carl (Harris Dickinson), a male model, is told at a casting call to scowl for the expensive labels and smile for the cheap ones. His girlfriend Yaya (Charlbi Dean), a model and influencer, lets the bill sit in front of him, and the row follows them into a taxi and a hotel room. The couple are invited aboard a superyacht. Their fellow guests include Dimitry (Zlatko Burić), a Russian who made his fortune in fertiliser, an English couple, Winston and Clementine (Oliver Ford Davies and Amanda Walker), who manufacture hand grenades, and Jarmo (Henrik Dorsin), a lonely tech millionaire. Paula (Vicki Berlin) runs a crew instructed to say yes to everything, Abigail (Dolly de Leon) cleans the toilets, and the Captain (Woody Harrelson) will not leave his cabin.

## Review

Ruben Östlund has spent two films, [*Force Majeure*](https://film.one/film/force-majeure) (2014) and *The Square* (2017), watching comfortable people fail small tests of character. *Triangle of Sadness* moves the experiment up the income scale, puts the subjects on a superyacht, and runs it in three chapters. It is his broadest and loudest film: one sequence in the middle is as funny as anything we have seen in years, and the two hours around it keep making a point that was clear before the boat left harbour.

The first chapter is the sharpest written. Carl (Harris Dickinson) stands in a line of shirtless men at a casting while a presenter asks them to switch between a scowl for the expensive label and a grin for the cheap one, and Dickinson does both on command with a face that has learned what it is worth. Then he and his girlfriend Yaya (Charlbi Dean) go to dinner, the bill arrives, and she looks at her phone. The row runs from the table to a taxi to a hotel bed, and Östlund refuses to cut away from any of it. Dean is excellent, sweet and cold in the same breath, and Dickinson plays a man who knows he is losing and cannot work out which principle he is defending.

Then the yacht. Josefin Åsberg gives it white leather, blond wood and light coming off the water, so nothing on board can cast a shadow or hide a stain. Sofie Krunegård puts the crew in identical white and the guests in whatever they woke up in, so you can tell at a glance who works. Vicki Berlin’s Paula drills her staff to say yes to everything. The guests are Dimitry (Zlatko Burić), a Russian who made his fortune in fertiliser; his wife Vera (Sunnyi Melles); Winston and Clementine (Oliver Ford Davies and Amanda Walker), an English couple who make hand grenades; and Jarmo (Henrik Dorsin), a lonely tech millionaire. Burić is the pick, having a wonderful time.

Woody Harrelson’s Captain stays in his cabin, drunk, until he is made to host the Captain’s Dinner, and Östlund schedules it for the night of a storm. What follows is about twenty minutes of physical comedy staged with rare precision. Fredrik Wenzel fixes the camera to the ship so the whole dining room tilts with it, and waiters skate across the frame with trays while the guests turn grey over their oysters. The soundtrack is retching, breaking glass and a tannoy over which the Captain reads Marx and Dimitry answers with Reagan, the two getting on famously while the guests are past caring. We laughed until it hurt, and afterwards felt slightly grubby about it. Sunnyi Melles, on the floor of a sliding lavatory, deserves some kind of medal.

The third chapter puts a handful of survivors on a beach. We will not say how they get there. Dolly de Leon’s Abigail, who cleaned the yacht’s toilets and was invisible to everyone aboard, is the only one who can catch a fish or light a fire, and she notices what that makes her worth. De Leon is the best thing in the film, watchful and unsentimental. But the chapter is long, and Östlund and his co-editor Mikel Cee Karlsson let it run past the point where the material is doing anything new. Somewhere on that beach we started checking the time.

The complaint most critics make is that the targets are easy, and they are right, but that is not the problem. *Force Majeure* was also about a man behaving badly; the difference is that it let us think we might have done the same. Nobody watching this will mistake themselves for Dimitry, and the film knows it, and settles for letting us enjoy the disgrace of people who are not us. That is a good night out. It is not, as the film keeps implying, a diagnosis.

It runs 147 minutes and carries a 15, chiefly for the dinner. See it with people who do not mind being sick, and be ready, once the beach arrives, for the film to keep telling you something you already knew.

*Fi1m score 66, published 20 September 2026.*

## What the critics say

Most critics lean positive, and the praise clusters on one thing: the film is funny, often crudely so. The captain’s dinner, with its cascade of vomit and worse, is the sequence reviewers return to, and most treat it as a cathartic high point rather than an embarrassment. Woody Harrelson’s Marxist captain and Dolly de Leon in the island section are the performances singled out most often. Östlund’s framing and the precision of his set-pieces draw admiration even from critics who dislike the film.

The reservations are about the target. A sizeable minority finds the satire blunt, obvious and pleased with itself: the rich are easy prey, and the film flatters its audience rather than unsettling it. The New York Times and The New Yorker go furthest, judging it complacent and mechanical, and The Guardian finds the third act flabby after the second-act climax. The spread is wide, from festival raves to outright dismissals, which is unusual for a comedy this broadly enjoyed.

### Reviews we read (26)

- **Sight and Sound** (90/100, inferred): The critic calls the film a dark but uproarious provocation and class-war Gilligan’s Island, praising its slick mix of physical and verbal farce along with sharp observations of human behavior under capitalism. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/reviews/triangle-sadness-ruben-ostlunds-savage-castaway-satire-finds-humanity-all-sea)
- **The AV Club**, Tomris Laffly (A-): Praises it as Östlund’s best yet, a wild, gross, hilarious and incisive satire that shifts sympathies and hits a sweet spot between entertainment and commentary. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/triangle-sadness-review-ruben-ostlund-charlbi-dean-1849622692)
- **Total Film** (85/100, inferred): Triangle of Sadness is blisteringly funny, narratively intrepid and spitting mad, with pointed satire on the idle super-rich that arrives acutely at Cannes. Its three-part structure and riotous characters deliver an invigorating festival highlight despite lacking subtlety. [Read](https://www.gamesradar.com/triangle-of-sadness-review-cannes-2022/)
- **Empire**, John Nugent (80/100, inferred): Östlund delivers a farcical yet searing satire of the wealthy, with blunt, enjoyable comedy centered on class upheaval after a yacht disaster. The scatological set-piece and grotesque characters provide cathartic, if unsubtle, entertainment. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/triangle-of-sadness/)
- **Evening Standard**, Charlotte O'Sullivan (80/100, inferred): Östlund’s Palme d’Or winner is a violently entertaining drama that skewers the rich with extreme, precise satire and dynamic camerawork. The third act on the island is tense and urgent, highlighting inverted hierarchies. [Read](https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/film/triangle-of-sadness-movie-review-woody-harrelson-palme-dor-b1035474.html)
- **Little White Lies**, Hannah Strong (4/4/4): The critic finds the over-the-top satire enjoyable with stomach-churning scenes and visual creativity, though it gestures at big questions on class and gender without bold statements and ends abruptly. [Read](https://lwlies.com/reviews/triangle-of-sadness)
- **The Telegraph** (4/5): The critic calls it a bold and brilliant scatological Lord of the Flies set among the super-rich, full of explosive gross-out humour and epic schadenfreude that edges into sympathy. [Read](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/2022/10/28/triangle-sadness-review-noam-chomsky-oligarchs-charlbi-dean/)
- **The Times**, Kevin Maher (4/5): The critic praises the ambitious, consistently entertaining fable about the super-rich that uses one-liners, Woody Harrelson and gross-out gags to show the dehumanising essence of free-market capitalism. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/triangle-of-sadness-review-ruben-ostlund-woody-harrelson-c3cm0jsrt)
- **Time Out**, Phil de Semlyen (4/5): The critic calls it a wildly funny takedown of the super-rich that goes all the way with bodily-fluid humour, praising its clarity, economy and combination of sledgehammer and scalpel satire. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/triangle-of-sadness-2022)
- **The i Paper**, Geoffrey Macnab (70/100, inferred): The absurdist wealth satire offers little new insight on greed but excels through sharp comic observation and strong performances, especially Harrelson and De Leon. It turns into a comedic Lord of the Flies on an island with tongue-in-cheek tone. [Read](https://inews.co.uk/culture/film/triangle-of-sadness-review-if-you-enjoyed-the-white-lotus-youll-love-this-absurdist-wealth-satire-1938281)
- **Variety**, Peter Debruge (Critic's Pick): Östlund expands on the formula from 'The Square' with wickedly funny absurdist situations that make the privileged squirm and test ideas about beauty and wealth as currency. The meticulous precision in constructing scenes creates agonizing unease and makes viewers think. [Read](https://variety.com/2022/film/reviews/triangle-of-sadness-review-ruben-ostlund-1235272762/)
- **Financial Times**, Danny Leigh (60/100, inferred): The critic describes an erratic new comedy about the indignities of success and a messy satire about wealth that occasionally uses a scalpel but more often a scattergun, stretching length and cranking volume. [Read](https://www.ft.com/content/ad1869df-7f80-4335-843d-037c4703c4ed)
- **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (3/5): The critic finds Östlund's takedown of the super-rich has more style than substance, with grotesque caricatures and a gloriously cathartic second-act climax that gives way to a flabby third act and an obvious message. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/oct/29/triangle-of-sadness-review-glossy-satire-on-the-ultra-wealthy)
- **Los Angeles Times**, Glenn Whipp (50/100, inferred): The overstuffed satire strains with obvious, blunt critiques of the one percent and excessive vomit sequences that tax patience. It singles out Dolly de Leon's sensational performance as the most memorable element and endorses self-sufficiency in the island section. [Read](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2022-10-06/triangle-of-sadness-review-vomit)
- **Screen Daily** (50/100, inferred): The critic finds flashes of caustic insight but wishes for a lighter touch, noting that the laborious satire on capitalism lacks the ironic cool of Östlund’s prior work while praising brisk ensemble acting. [Read](https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/triangle-of-sadness-cannes-review/5170949.article)
- **Film Comment**, Chloe Lizotte (45/100, inferred): The critic finds the film high on rhetorical acrobatics but lacking the humanist curiosity of Östlund's earlier work, with a heavy narrative hand that makes characters cartoonish and removes room for surprise. The opening modeling-industry vignette stands out for its improvisatory performances and exploration of equality rhetoric versus retrograde power dynamics. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/pyramid-scheme/)
- **The Hollywood Reporter**, David Rooney (40/100, inferred): The critic finds the satire disappointingly blunt and glib, self-indulgent with easy digs at wealth and privilege, though the opening and central couple provide some sly humor. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/triangle-of-sadness-cannes-2022-1235146931/)
- **The New Yorker**, Richard Brody (40/100, inferred): The film shoots fish in a barrel with facile political stances that flatter the art-house audience rather than challenging assumptions, resulting in a mechanical and crass satire. The fine cast, especially Charlbi Dean, lends life to the superficial caricatures amid stiff direction. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/triangle-of-sadness-reviewed-were-on-a-yacht-and-were-puking)
- **Vulture** (30/100, inferred): Finds the class satire smug and nihilistic, with broadly drawn characters, though early scenes on models are good; overall a slog with hazardous levels of smug. [Read](https://www.vulture.com/2022/10/triangle-of-sadness-review-hazardous-levels-of-smug.html)
- **The New York Times**, A.O. Scott (20/100, inferred): The critic finds the satire obvious, preening, and complacent, with surface cleverness that fails to expose hypocrisies and instead advertises the status quo. He singles out the meandering plot and visual polish as elements that fool some viewers but ultimately make it a very bad movie. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/06/movies/triangle-of-sadness-review.html)
- **Collider**, Ross Bonaime (B+): The critic finds Östlund’s class satire fun and ridiculous despite being occasionally blunt and long, praising the director’s framing and shot composition as a highlight. [Read](https://collider.com/triangle-of-sadness-review-ruben-ostlund-woody-harrelson/)
- **Deadline**, Stephanie Bunbury (80/100, inferred): The film is a bitter, clever satire that delivers a mission statement on how equality does not and cannot exist. It singles out the rigid hierarchy of shipboard life and the behavior of the ultra-wealthy survivors for sharp observation. [Read](https://deadline.com/2022/05/triangle-of-sadness-cannes-film-review-ruben-ostlund-woody-harrelson-1235029662/)
- **/Film**, Rafael Motamayor (8/10): The critic calls the film an utterly hilarious satire in three acts with biting class commentary that explodes into chaos. They single out Woody Harrelson's standout performance as the Marxist captain for praise. [Read](https://www.slashfilm.com/870835/triangle-of-sadness-review-a-biting-and-hysterical-satire-cannes/)
- **The Skinny**, Jamie Dunn (4/5): Östlund delivers a deliciously vicious satire that takes a sledgehammer to the global elite in three increasingly satisfying chapters, with outrageously funny sequences like the Captain's Dinner standing out. The targets may be low-hanging fruit and the critique unsophisticated, but the gags remain deliriously funny. [Read](https://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/new-releases/kviff-2022-triangle-of-sadness)
- **The Playlist**, Matthew Monagle (C-): The critic finds the broad class satire faltering and overly cynical, with underdeveloped ideas and tedious stretches. They single out the physical comedy in the capsizing sequence as one of the few redeeming elements amid the heavy-handed messaging. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/triangle-of-sadness-review-cannes-20220521/)
- **Paste**, Brianna Zigler (5.3): The critic views the film as a mostly tedious and surface-level class satire that lacks novelty or depth, though it is entertaining at times and features strong performances from Dickinson and de Leon. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/ruben-ostlund/triangle-of-sadness-review)

## Details

- **Director:** Ruben Östlund
- **Director:** Ruben Östlund
- **Writer:** Ruben Östlund
- **Cinematography:** Fredrik Wenzel
- **Editor:** Mikel Cee Karlsson, Ruben Östlund
- **Production design:** Josefin Åsberg
- **Costume design:** Sofie Krunegård
- **Producer:** Erik Hemmendorff, Philippe Bober
- **Cast:** Harris Dickinson as Carl; Charlbi Dean as Yaya; Dolly de Leon as Abigail; Woody Harrelson as The Captain; Zlatko Burić as Dimitry; Vicki Berlin as Paula; Henrik Dorsin as Jarmo; Iris Berben as Therese
- **Runtime:** 2h 27m
- **Certificate (MPA):** R
- **Release (the US):** 28 October 2022
- **Genres:** Comedy, Drama
- **Also in:** [Best Picture winners](https://film.one/collections/oscar-best-picture.md) (Nominee, 2022); [Golden Globe Best Musical or Comedy winners](https://film.one/collections/golden-globe-comedy.md) (Nominee, 2022); [Palme d'Or winners](https://film.one/collections/palme-dor.md) (Winner, 2022)
- **Budget:** $16 million
- **Box office:** $25 million
- **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYDidXdG1Wc

## Where to watch in the US

- Netflix: streaming
- Amazon Prime Video: rent $3.99, hd
- Amazon Prime Video: buy $14.99, hd

*Checked 2026-09-20.*

Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, DK, EC, ES, FI, FR, GB, IE, IN, IT, KR, MX, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PH, SE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country.

## Awards

- Academy Awards 2023: Best Picture (nominated); Best Writing, Original Screenplay (nominated)
- César Award for Best Foreign Film 2023: César Award for Best Foreign Film (nominated)
- David di Donatello for Best International Film 2023: David di Donatello for Best International Film (nominated)
- Golden Globes 2023: Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy (nominated)
- LUX European Audience Film Award 2023: LUX European Audience Film Award (nominated)
- Robert Award for Best English Language Film 2023: Robert Award for Best English Language Film (won)
- Cannes Film Festival 2022: Palme d'Or (won)
- European Film Award for Best Actor 2022: European Film Award for Best Actor (won)
- European Film Award for Best Director 2022: European Film Award for Best Director (won)
- European Film Award for Best Film 2022: European Film Award for Best Film (won)
- European Film Award for Best Screenwriter 2022: European Film Award for Best Screenwriter (won)
- European University Film Award 2022: European University Film Award (nominated)
- Guldbagge Award for Best Film 2022: Guldbagge Award for Best Film (won)
- Meeting Point Europe Award 2022: Meeting Point Europe Award (won)

## If you liked this

- *Force Majeure* (2014), Fi1m 84: Östlund’s earlier, quieter test of a man’s nerve, and the one that still stings. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/force-majeure.md)
- *Swept Away* (1974): Lina Wertmüller strands a rich woman and a deckhand; the hierarchy flips fast.
- *The Exterminating Angel* (1962): Buñuel’s dinner guests find they cannot leave the house, and manners collapse by the hour.
- *The Admirable Crichton* (1957): Shipwrecked aristocrats discover their butler is the only one who can do anything.
- *Parasite* (2019), Fi1m 91: Bong Joon-ho’s household comedy about who gets the basement, played straight and sharp. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/parasite.md)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/triangle-of-sadness