'Triangle of Sadness': Biting social satire delights Cannes

Fashion models, Instagram influencers and Russian oligarchs collide on a yacht — and some very extreme sickness ensues — in Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s “Triangle of Sadness.”

CANNES, France -- Fashion models, Instagram influencers and Russian oligarchs collide on a yacht — and some very extreme sickness ensues — in Ruben Östlund's “Triangle of Sadness,” a social satire that had viewers at the Cannes Film Festival in hysterics.

The Swedish filmmaker's latest, co-starring Woody Harrelson as a Marxist boat captain, has made one of the biggest splashes at this year's festival. At its premiere Saturday evening, there were such waves of laughter and applause that Östlund on Sunday compared it to a crowd at a soccer match.

Östlund has already found an international audience for movies that take an uproarious, uncomfortable aim at money, masculinity and other big social targets in films like the Alpine marital drama “Force Majeure” (remade as “Downhill,” with Julia Louis Dreyfus and Will Ferrell) and the art-world satire “The Square,” which won the Palme d'Or top prize at Cannes in 2017.

But in his first English-language film, and with a budget twice that of “The Square,” Östlund wanted to go even further with his particular brand of “rollercoaster for adults” cinema.