Editors note: Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series debuts and celebrates the scripts of films that will factor in this year’s movie awards races.
Ruben Östlund’s second Palme d’Or winner, Triangle of Sadness, inherits its name from a witty Swedish saying that describes the wrinkles that form between a person’s eyebrows when they are worried or stressed.
“You get it if you have had a lot of trouble in your life. But you can fix it with Botox in 15 minutes,” Östlund preciously told Deadline of the phrase.
“It’s a term that comes from cosmetic surgery — not plastic surgery, cosmetic surgery — and I thought it was comical. Like, a dark, comical comment about surface and beauty: our obsession with beauty, and our obsession with looks, and our belief that our inner problems will be solved if we construct a great shell around ourselves.”
The term is explained during the early moments of the film, which follows Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (the late Charlbi Dean), a celebrity model couple who are invited on a luxury cruise for the uber-rich, helmed by an unhinged boat captain (Woody Harrelson). What first appeared Instagrammable ends catastrophically, leaving the survivors stranded on a desert island and fighting to stay alive.
As Östlund has described the plot: “We start in the fashion world, and then we are on a luxury yacht, and then we end up on a deserted island — basically, the film takes place in these three different environments.”
Released in the U.S. in October by Neon after its Cannes triumph and ahead of its Best Picture win at the European Film Awards, Triangle of Sadness also stars Dolly De Leon, Zlatko Burić, Henrik Dorsin and Vicki Berlin. Östlund directed the pic, his first English-language feature, from his own script, with Erik Hemmendorff and Philippe Bober serving as producers.
Read Östlund’s screenplay below.