The appointment is on a yacht from the Palma yacht club on a sunny day at the end of October. “It’s the ideal place”, says Ruben Östlund smiling about the strategic site chosen for the interview. The Swedish director opened the Evolution Mallorca International Film Festival with El triángulo de la tristeza, a scathing satire on the cult of money and beauty with which he won his second Palme d’Or at Cannes, just five years after rising to the top on La Croisette with The Square. This Friday, February 17, it hits theaters.
The story, awarded in turn as the best European film of 2022 and contender for three Oscars (film, direction and original screenplay), introduces us to a couple of models -she is also an influencer and earns much more than him- who are invited to a luxury cruise ship where mega-rich clients, including a Russian capitalist, end up vomiting oysters and champagne during the gala dinner in a sequence not suitable for sensitive stomachs that divided critics. “They should serve us champagne,” he says ironically to his interlocutor before starting the talk.
After Force Majeure and The Square, with this film he has said that he closes a trilogy about what it means to be a man today. What has he learned?
I have learned to stop feeling ashamed. Yes, I am no longer ashamed. Now I’m proud to be a man after dealing with all these gender mistakes and expectations. But you know? I think when I started in film school, a lot of the directors back then started working with little video cameras where they could point the camera at themselves and look at themselves. During my study, there were at least five or six directors who made documentaries about themselves. So when I started making fiction films, it was a natural way for me to look at myself. So I started building my films from experiences I’ve had that I can’t forget. And a lot of them were connected to me and that expectation of being who I should be as a man. In the first film that I consider a trilogy like Force Majeure, there was that situation of a man who is not fulfilling the social contract, who should sacrifice himself for the family and what he is actually doing is acting selfishly, running away to save himself. same. I could immediately identify that it would be a great crime for me to do something like that with my family. And that’s when I get interested, when I find a certain type of conflict or dilemma for me as a man to handle. And when I made The Triangle of Sadness I didn’t consider it the third part of the trilogy. But when I was editing, I realized that I had done the same thing again. It is that the main character is a man who struggles with his masculine identity.
Although the film takes place in three settings, it all starts in the fashion industry. Indeed, his wife is a fashion photographer. What fascinated you about that world to want to talk about it?
I think one of the starting points was when he started talking to me about male models and told me that being a male model is not a high-status profession. They are considered vain, earning a third of the salary of female models. She told me about a friend of hers who worked as a car mechanic when she was 19 years old and one day someone asked her if she wanted to be a model. He told her that she could try. Two years later, she became one of the highest-paid male models in the industry. She starred in a perfume campaign, something that made her world famous. If I showed it to you, you would recognize it. But when she was at the top, she started to lose hair. Her agent gave her two years at most to continue working as a model. But there was another problem, which was that he was too tied to the perfume campaign and no one else would hire him at the same level. So he advised her that it would be great if he worked with a famous girlfriend because then they could switch brands. The truth is that there were many aspects of all this that interested me, especially the beauty used as a currency with which you can climb in a society dominated by youth and sexuality. And then also that we have begun to look at our own life as a business project. So even the most private relationships are connected to the industry. Will our Instagram accounts grow if we’re together? That aspect fascinated me.
And how did you think of connecting that theme with the cruise and everything that happens after?
Well the third act takes place on an island, I don’t have a problem with spoilers, but I wanted to change the hierarchies, remove all the old ones. And basically they are when they are trying to survive on a deserted island. I mean, the ability to fish and make fire becomes kind of a hard currency. And the yacht was a way to get to the deserted island, but it was also a way to get to the Marxist captain, because I thought it would be fun if we had a scene where the yacht is in a storm and all the passengers are throwing up because they’re very dizzy at the same time as the marxist captain gets very drunk with the russian oligarch and starts playing with the microphones and starts reading the communist manifesto. So it was pictures like these that made me want to go there.
Now that you comment on the sequence in which everyone gets dizzy. How was the filming process?
It was difficult because we wanted to go a step further than what was described in the script. The shooting set moved as if it were a ship. Everything was swaying and it was very chaotic to record it. The whole team went bad and it took a hell of a lot to pull off that sequence. But I think it turned out great.
Do you think we live in a society as narcissistic as the one you portray?
Maybe. Some time ago I asked some students at a school if they preferred to be intelligent or handsome, and the vast majority said handsome. It’s something that tells us about the power of image and the power of how we present ourselves on social media. And it is that beauty and our appearance have become a very important part of positioning ourselves. So, I don’t know if we are more narcissistic. Maybe we are. At least women are much more so than men. They are always taking pictures of themselves. It is fun.
To what extent is beauty and money important to you?
Well, the truth is that it is impossible to separate yourself from the culture in which one lives. So beauty is affecting me in a very, very strong way. I think it affects me more than money, actually. For example, I’m not as impressed by someone who is super rich as when you see a very beautiful person walking into a restaurant and it disrupts the entire social group dynamic. It’s hard not to be affected by it.
And how do you get along with social networks?
Of course, it’s great that you can now reach so many people in such a short time. It is only fair that, as a woman, you can exploit your beauty and sexuality yourself instead of someone else doing it. So there are certain things that are really good, of course. But then I think it’s also scary because we’ve become, if you will, content providers for large companies. So every day when I post something on Instagram, I work for free for a completely absurd and rich big company. They also have the right to sell my images. And it’s something we’ve accepted, so it’s strange.
With El triángulo de la tristeza your intention was to provoke the public? Have you ever put on a red line?
Yes, I think I like provocation in art. I think the good thing about teasing is that it often creates a thought in you that you can’t let go of. But some provocations are not justified. If it’s just provoking it doesn’t work. But if a tease works, the good thing is that you keep thinking about it for a while, something that has been much more than entertainment. When I’m making films that are going to be released in theaters my goal is to make the audience face new thoughts and have something to talk about after the screening.
What was it like working with Charlbi Dean and how did you react to her sudden death last August?
It was really great working with her. She was a very precise actress, very professional and very skilled. Like a player on a great team. She was really cheering for her colleagues and everyone on the set. And when we presented the film in Cannes we had a great feeling to be all together. Therefore, when she passed away, we felt a very great loss.
Did you imagine winning a second Palme d’Or?
I know that when I went to Cannes, I was happy to go to the competition. After the official screening, it was a great experience. Then you always expect an award and the closer you get to the time of the ceremony, the more you hope to get some award. But you never expect to win the Palme d’Or.
His next film will take place on a plane…
Yes. I want to confront the protagonists with boredom, what happens during a long flight in which there is no entertainment, there is no access to the mobile or the possibility of watching movies. We have become used to being constantly distracted by so many devices that we no longer know what to do without them. My intention is to make an epic movie where people go crazy on the plane. I can already tell you that in the end it falls and everyone is going to die (laughs).