Triangle of Sadness

In the opening scenes of the 2022 Cannes Palme d'Or winner Triangle of Sadness, the gender pay gap comes up for scrutiny. But not, perhaps, in the way you'd ...

But there is one idea that Östlund seems intent on treating seriously, and that's the idea of the inequality between women and men. The film's themes land via swings and roundabouts. In Force Majeure, it was an avalanche that engulfed an alfresco restaurant, laying bare the cowardice of a young father of two. What transpires among the crew after disaster strikes reflects Östlund's somewhat jaded view of humanity as a whole. The two playfully throw favourite lines at each other from their political heroes – citations from Marx collide with one-liners from Reagan. In The Square, his other Palme d'Or winner, it was a violent performance artist pretending to be a monkey, terrorising attendees at an art museum gala. When the almighty tempest hits, the mostly elderly, extremely wealthy passengers are sitting down to a formal dinner hosted by the captain. Conventional etiquette suggests it's the man's responsibility to pay, but as a male model, Carl earns significantly less than Yaya, and, he reminds her, it's her shout. But not, perhaps, in the way you'd expect. But fast-forward to the film's finale, and there's nothing ambivalent about what befalls Carl in the final stretches of the movie, as he gets to learn what it's really like to submit to gendered power. For long stretches of that scene, as the couple argue on the ride home and in the hotel lift, it's as if Carl has made the compelling point about his relative disadvantage as a male model. It's a scene that suggests each side of the ideological divide is a mere inversion of the other, and neither is of any consequence (Östlund