Triangulating

As society has grown increasingly critical of class divisions, the "eat the rich" sentiment has become more common in entertainment. One of this year's Oscar nominees for Best Picture is very specifically concerned with this topic, the black comedy Triangle of Sadness.

Carl, a model, and Yaya, an internet influencer, have a strained relationship. But they're together for now at least, and going on a week-long luxury cruise aboard a superyacht. Slightly sour experiences abound, but it all comes to a head on the night of the captain's dinner -- and gets much, much worse from there.

I've already told you more than I knew about this movie before I sat down to watch it, and I hesitated to detail even that much. That's because Triangle of Sadness doesn't just engage in class critique, but in another trend you see online a fair bit these days: the "at no point while watching this video did I know what was going to happen next" escalation.

There's a 20-minute stretch in the middle of this movie that was frankly shocking to me. It's not the sort of content you'd expect the Academy to endorse with an Oscar nomination, nor for the Cannes Film Festival to have awarded it with their top prize, the Palme d'Or. I imagine the critical praise comes from looking past that to Act Three, which is admittedly pretty great. In the last hour, this movie is at its most trenchant and most clever. You've already seen the wealthy and privileged brought low... only to learn that we've hardly reached the bottom yet.

But it takes an almost painfully long time to get there. There are 90 minutes preceding that, and I would cut 30 from that were I in charge of the edit. Writer-director Ruben Östlund has other sensibilities, however, which include letting a running gag run a very long time, and making sure every audience member is hyper-aware of his camera choices: awkward moves, and lingering on reactions more than dialogue. And they don't always seem to support or forward the action.

There are good performances, including Harris Dickinson and Charlbi Dean as the couple we follow into the wider story, and Woody Harrelson as the captain of the superyacht. But it's not until fairly late in the film that the real scene-stealer ascends: Dolly de Leon is excellent as Abigail (whose role is something better left to the viewer's discovery).

I had just about lost patience with this movie when it finally grabbed my attention and held it. But averaging that experience overall, I think I'd only come out on just this side of recommending it. I give Triangle of Sadness a B-. If you're "collecting the whole set" of Best Picture nominees this year, I would say it's one of the more enjoyable ones. But the oddsmakers seem to agree that it doesn't actually have a chance, so it's certainly one you can skip if you just want to see the "horses" truly in the race.