Peter Viney's Blog

Written and Directed by Ruben Östlund
2022
Palme d’Or winner 2022.

Blu-ray review Match 2024

CAST
Harrison Dickinson – Carl
Charibi Dean – Yaya
Dolly de Leon – Abigail
Zlatko Burić – Dmitry
Iris Berben – Therese
Vicki Berlin – Paula
Henrik Dorsin – Jarmo
Jean Christophe Folly- Nelson
Amanda Walker- Clementine
Oliver Ford-Davies – Winston
Sunnyi Melles- Vera
Woody Harrelson – Captain Smith
Alicia Eriksson – Alicia

I’ve reached the stage of reviewing films when they come out on blu-ray / DVD rather than in the cinema. Yes, it’s not the full experience, but there are films which spend a very short time in the multiplex squeezed between comic book franchises. That’s true even of films like this that won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and received an eight minute standing ovation when shown there.

It’s what American and British directors of the 60s and 70s called ‘European’ when referring to the likes of Buñuel and Pasolini and they did not mean it as a compliment. However, nowadays European films are in English. I watched a film in a Soho viewing cinema with British film executives. As it started one said, ‘Fuck. It’s in fucking German.’ Then they all promptly fell asleep and snored through. It was after lunch. Ruben Östlund, being Swedish, joins ABBA in being able to write in English better than most native speakers.

It is described as a satirical black comedy. The film has just one A- lister, Woody Harrelson (if he is still an A lister). His part is a cameo only. It is in three diverse sections labelled Part One to Part Three.

Complete plot spoilers. Beware.

Part one: Carl and Yaya

We are introduced to Carl  (Harris Dickinson)in a room full of bare chested male models who are auditioning. We meet Yaya (Charibi Dean), his girlfriend, who is a model and influencer.

Let’s say something right away about sound in 5.1. There is a lot of ambient back speaker work. Insects fly round the speakers. When Carl and Yaya are in the taxi the rain noise is heavy interrupted by the squeak of the back windscreen wiper. This will be very obvious by part two, which has ship noises around you all the time. It doesn’t drown any dialogue. It works. It gives a sense of the space, sometimes a tight space.

Yaya wants to be trophy wife one day. You can see ‘super model’ all over her, particularly in her hugely winning smile. Carl is taciturn. It is explained in the audition that he has a triangle of sadness – the area between eyebrows and nose is wrinkled. Never heard of it. Plastic surgeons refer to it and Botox it out.

They bicker (endlessly) about who is paying for the meal. She earns more than him, but does everything to avoid paying. He comes across as petty and mean. She admits being manipulative, deliberately avoiding seeing the bill.

It started me thinking on the etiquette here. Well, they go on repeating the bickering so long that you have time to think outside the film. In the late 60s generally men picked up restaurant and pub bills. Not so much in my universities experience because we were students and it didn’t apply. But I can go back to pre-university. It was discussed openly. My then girlfriend was better off than me. £15 a week from working for her parents plus a large ‘clothes allowance.’ I was on £10. 10s 0d a week. I always paid for our Chinese or Indian restaurant meals and discotheque entry. It was held that women had to spend money on hairdressing, make-up, and stockings / tights, let alone clothes that might only be worn a few times. Men just found a clean shirt. Tights were measured in a life of days. Male socks in years. I don’t know what the etiquette is nowadays. After years of author tours often with female publishers’ reps, I am totally used to women paying for meals.

Part 2 The yacht

We cut straight to the luxury yacht and the purser (?) Paula explaining to the crew that every whim of the super-rich guests must be obeyed. If they ask for illegal substances, the answer is ‘Yes, sir! Yes, ma’am.’ It was filmed on Aristotle Onassis and Jackie Kennedy’s old yacht. Perhaps that was a common request.

We see a helicopter arrive with a yellow case which is dropped in the sea and collected. It is full of jars of Nutella for Dmitry, the Russian billionaire.

Here I think the plot falters … Carl and Yaya are on the yacht. No one reviewing is clear here. Is it because she’s an influencer? Is it because they are good-looking models adding to the sheen of the place? Are they minor celebrities? It didn’t seem so in part one.  It seems later that they are there on the boat free.

The guests are obscenely rich.

Dmitry is a Russian fertilizer billionaire, or ‘King of Shit.’ There with is wife Vera.

Winston & Clementine (Same as the Churchills … Geddit?) are sweet, elderly British munitions manufacturers specializing in hand grenades and land mines. (For us, Oliver Ford-Davies as Winston is the only one we’ve seen on stage).

Jarmo is a boring Scandinavian tech billionaire, sort of a Garrison Keillor Norwegian bachelor farmer, but with loadsamoney and less personality.

Therese is a German in a wheelchair who suffered a stroke and can now only repeat one phrase plus Nein nein. We hear her one phrase far too often.

The captain, Thomas Smith, is drunk and refuses to leave his cabin, leaving Darius, the first mate in charge.

Carl gets a Greek deckhand fired for not wearing a shirt. Yaya had admired him and he’d simply said ‘hello.’ While complaining about him to Paula, Carl is bare chested.

Vera insists that Alicia, a charming girl crew member, join her in the jacuzzi and exchange social roles and swim. Then someone (possibly Vera) wants every single crew member to descend the water slide for a swim. They do, the engine room crew, the Filipina maids,  It’s before the Captain’s party and the chef suggests the food will go bad. The captain (Woody Harrelson) has been dragged out for it.

It is a dark and stormy night. The food served is oysters, octopus, mussels … soon the ship is swaying in the storm (all around us in surround sound).

Here if you’ve ever had a vomiting bug, look away. Sea sickness (or salmonella or both) spreads spectacularly. And in surround sound.  Dmitri’s wife is rolling in vomit and shit in their bathroom. The toilets back up and explode. This is spectacular filming, and deeply, deeply unpleasant and NOT funny.

We cut to Abigail and the other maids on their knees scrubbing up the vomit.

Dmitri, the capitalist pig, and the Marxist Captain Smith exchange quotes and argue into a mic, broadcast over the tannoy system. This section is WAY too long. Not amusing. Polemic to the worst degree.

A bunch of pirates, who have presumably been watching the film Captain Phillips attack the ship. Winston and Clementine are hoist with one of their own petards. Shipwreck.

Part 3: The Island

Anyone here seen Lord of The Flies?

The survivors assemble on a beach. As female survivors should, Yaya is in a flimsy whispy frock. There is Carl, Yaya, Dmitri the Shit King, Jarmo the Tech King, Paula the Purser, Therese with the stroke in an inflatable dinghy, and Nelson. Nelson says he works in the engine room, but he is a surviving pirate. (Nelson? Another slur on a British hero!)

Then an enclosed rescue lifeboat “pod” arrives. It has Abigail, a Filipina toilet manager from the cruise , and she has come with the pod’s supply of water and food. Abigail can catch fish, Abigail can light a fire.

Abigail controls them by wading into the sea and catching the food and insists on being appointed captain.

Then she is now in the exploiter cast, and exercises her right as the power elite by choosing Carl, the best-looking and youngest male, as her sexual companion in the pod.

Gender and social role reversal. This is not subtle. Everyone knows why Carl has to go to the pod nightly. They are all terrified by noises in the woods.

The men manage to kill a donkey, executed by Jarmo with a big rock. A donkey? That was the frightening noise. Hardly wildlife. So how deserted is the desert island? Yaya and Abigail set off on a hike to seek food.

While they’re gone, a beach souvenir seller arrives but only confronts Therese, who can’t communicate. On the other side of the mountain, Yaya and Abigail discover a luxury beach resort. Yaya is ecstatic, but Abigail realizes that her rule will be at an end.

She picks up a rock like the one used to kill the donkey and walks up behind Yaya on the beach. Yaya offers her a job as her assistant when they get back. Abigail hesitates, but she still holds the rock, ready to pounce. We cut to Carl running desperately through the forest … he may have sussed it. Who knows? We don’t, the film maker not having resolved the ending.

I had guessed the ending before I saw the beach vendor, and was certain when Yaya yelled she’d seen something.

Overall

• It’s sledgehammer, so is the humour.  
• The Captain Smith – Dmitry debate is sophomoric.
• The puking bits are truly disgusting.
• The first part is tedious.
• It runs to 148 minutes. It would be greatly improved by a 30 minute cut, though personally I’d go for a larger cut than that.
• It’s indeed ‘European’ in the American Western director sense. That means a touch pretentious.