Manager: Ruben Ostlund
artists: Harris Dickinson, Charlby Dean, Dolly De Leon, Woody Harrelson
Year: 2022
Premiere: 17 February 2023
★★★★
After mocking masculinity in ‘Force Majeure’ and embarrassing the art world in ‘The Square’, now Ruben Ostlund It shoots at capitalism, patriarchy and the so-called matriarchal utopia, tax evaders, structural racism, the class system, ‘instants’ and high culinary nonsense, among other targets. The film that won the Swede his second Palme d’Or award as he completes a frenzied voyage between the superficial fashion industry and a remote island aboard a luxury cruise ship. It starts to look like a ‘flashy’ version of Zoolander (2001) and then, before, Alternative greetings to writers like Buñuel, Godard, Brecht, and the Farrelly brothers. And his satire, meanwhile, is thunderous, vulgar, as subtle as a hammer blow, and proudly nihilistic; Absolute power corrupts whoever uses it, he assures.
Like almost all of Östlund’s cinema, this is a disjointed and often smug work; moreover, the goals of his sarcastic remarks are quite clear and his arguments are familiar. None of this, however, is due to its dazzling visual elegance, technical precision or Tremendous talent to make the audience laugh nor the overwhelming power of money to remind us that money is worthless when its owner finds himself rolling on a floor soaked with fecal juice and vomit.