A sharp, savage class satire that starts as a glossy luxury-cruise comedy and mutates into a brutal survival story. It’s funniest when it’s most uncomfortable, with big set-piece energy and a mean streak aimed at wealth, beauty, and status games.
Triangle of Sadness
Where to watch: Buy
Movie · Comedy · Drama
Sun · 2h 27m
Director: Ruben Östlund
Starring: Harris Dickinson, Charlbi Dean, Dolly de Leon
Overview
A celebrity model couple are invited on a luxury cruise for the uber-rich, helmed by an unhinged, alcoholic captain. What first appears Instagrammable ends catastrophically, leaving the survivors stranded on a desert island in a struggle of hierarchy.
Director
Ruben Östlund
Cast
Harris Dickinson, Charlbi Dean, Dolly de Leon
Curator Review
Verdict
A sharp, savage class satire that starts as a glossy luxury-cruise comedy and mutates into a brutal survival story. It’s funniest when it’s most uncomfortable, with big set-piece energy and a mean streak aimed at wealth, beauty, and status games.
Best for
Viewers who like social satire with escalating chaos
Fans of cringe comedy and discomfort humor
Audiences interested in class, power, and hierarchy
People who enjoy films that shift from polished to grotesque
Skip if
You want warm, likable characters
You dislike bodily humor or prolonged discomfort
You prefer subtle, low-key satire
You want a straightforward tone that doesn’t keep changing
Overview
Triangle of Sadness is a gleefully nasty dismantling of wealth, beauty, and social performance. Ruben Östlund builds each section like a pressure cooker, starting with model-world vanity and luxury-brand absurdity before pushing the story into outright survival farce. The joke is never just that rich people are ridiculous; it’s that everyone is trapped in systems of status they pretend to control.
Worth noting
The cruise sequence is the movie’s centerpiece, a long, escalating catastrophe that turns privilege into slapstick. Östlund is especially good at making every interaction feel transactional, whether it’s flirtation, labor, or ideology. The film’s rhythm is deliberately abrasive, but that’s part of the point: it wants you to feel the social friction as much as laugh at it.
Bottom line
What lingers most is the way the film keeps reordering power. Once the setting changes, the rules do too, and the movie becomes less about glamour than about who can exploit a new hierarchy fastest. It’s pointed, provocative, and often very funny, even when it’s being cruel.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Ali (4.5★) · 22718 likes
“eww she flirt with the rolex man for Rolex” -a dude that’s fucking the pretzel stick lady for pretzel stick
tamar (4.5★) · 20907 likes
my face went from h&m to balenciaga real quick
hollie amanda (3.5★) · 18401 likes
rip karl marx you would’ve loved triangle of sadness
Oliver Swift (3.5★) · 13786 likes
Letterboxd Pro members vs regular Letterboxd users
thedayofthedot (5★) · 12324 likes
Woody Harrelson and the old Russian need to do a podcast together
Themes
class conflict, wealth and privilege, social hierarchy, beauty standards, status anxiety, survival, consumerism, power reversal
Topics
satire, dark comedy, class warfare, luxury culture, cringe comedy, survival, social hierarchy, body humor, European cinema, black comedy