#3: TRIANGLE OF SADNESS

STARRING: Harris Dickinson, Charlbi Dean, Dolly de Leon, Zlatko Buric, Iris Berben, Vicki Berline some other people, then Woody Harrelson. Written and directed by Ruben Östlund. Budget $15.6 million. Running time a not at all brief 147 minutes far too long.

Back in 2003 the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, which included a £50,000 prize, went to Vernon God Little, a book described by some in the intelligencia as 'the funniest book of the Century'. I read it and discovered it wasn't. In fact, it was one of the most boring and unfunniest books I had ever read. However, I did learn a valuable lesson that day. If a book or film has been lauded by the critics as the 'funniest thing ever', or won the Booker Prize, or the Palme d'Or, then not only is it not funny it is indeed going to be both deeply unfunny and frankly unbelievably pants.

Now, 20 years later Triangle of Sadness is released, a film described by New Yorker as: 

"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".

This satirical black comedy about how disgustingly the over privileged and super wealthy are won last year's Cannes Palme d'Or (and an eight minute standing ovation). 

I can only assume that last year two films starring Woody Harrelson about the super rich onboard a luxury yacht where released at the same time and with the same title, one was fantastic and the other was the one I saw, which turned out to pretentious, pompous, self-important and actually really, really rather boring.

The plot, sees two over-privileged models land a free trip onboard Jackie Onassis's old yacht which is filled with only horrible super rich shits, the serving staff, the maids and finally the engine room boys and we learn that even among those below stairs there exists a hierarchy. 

For the next hour and 45 minutes absolutely nothing happens, until, communist and alcoholic Captain Woody Harrelson turns up for the trips obligatory Captain's Dinner meal which quickly turns into the Mr. Creosote scene from Monty Python's Meaning of Life as the ship hits an extreme storm and the projectile vomiting and liquid diarrhoea are explosively released from both ends .  

Then the ship is attacked by pirates and sunk. The next day the survivors wash up on a desert island and you realise this is a remake of the vasty superior 1957 The Admirable Crichton starring Kenneth More. There on that beach, the ship's hierarchy is shattered and the poor become the rulers and there, dear reader is where my patience finally snapped and I gave up. Yes, after having spent over £20 to see this literal piece of crap, I stood up, grabbed my coat and left with my Brother-in-Law in tow, leaving behind an utterly empty cinema. 

I had enjoyed Ruben Östlund's last film, The Square about an Art Museum installation but not so this self indulgent mess of a film, the points it raises are facile, the pace leaden to the point of self-induced narcolepsy and the humour, what little exists, relies exclusively on the Captain's Dinner scene and Woody Harrelson drunken tirade over the ship's tannoy and once he's gone, so did my patience.

When I got home I looked up how it ended on Wikipedia and thanked the gods of cinema from saving me from this wretched piece of twaddle. 

A total bag of piss, tied up with string and run over by a truck carrying liquid shit to a vomiting convention. Not worth even checking out for the Captain's Dinner. 

Wretched beyond belief. 1/10