Director: Ruben Östlund
Starring: Harris Dickinson, Charlbi Dean, Dolly De Leon, Zlatko Buric, Iris Berben, Henrik Dorsin and Woody Harrelson
Distributor: Sharmill Films
Runtime: 147 mins. Reviewed in Dec 2022
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan

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Rating notes: Mature themes, crude humour, coarse language and a sex scene

This multinational film tells the story of a luxury cruise with super-rich passengers on board. When the liner is ship-wrecked its passengers find themselves in a situation where affluence is irrelevant.

This is the first English speaking feature film for Swedish director Östlund. The film was awarded the prestigious Palme d’Or at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival; Östlund previously winning the Palme d’Or for The Square in 2017. The film is an unconstrained satire, set among the super-rich. It Is divided into three separate sections, depicting traumatic times for the privileged classes. The title refers to ‘the frown lines between the eyebrows’, which signal human stress.

Two celebrity fashion models, Yaya (Dean) and Carl (Dickinson), are in a problematic relationship together, and have been invited to cruise on a luxury boat in exchange for marketing their experience for public consumption. On board, is a Russian oligarch who made his fortune in waste management, a British arms dealer who made his money in weapons of mass destruction, and a high-tech wizard. The film fiercely satirises the rich and privileged upper class. Democracy is revered, because well engineered hand-grenades are being appropriately used. On board is Abigail (De Leon), a low-class, middle-aged toilet cleaner. She is a member of the yacht’s crew, under strict instruction to satisfy passengers’ every whim. After the boat takes to sea, a fierce storm erupts, and the ship is ship-wrecked following a pirate attack. The captain is an alcoholic who despises his passengers, and doesn’t care at all what happens to his ship. A small group of survivors manage to escape to an island thought to be deserted. Abigail demonstrates useful survival skills, and she takes on ‘captaincy’ of the group and wants recognition of her status. Jealousy starts to grip the survivors who fight among themselves to acquire ‘privileges’, that they were given in the past. Throughout, the film targets the super-rich. The film puts social, sexual, and gender inequalities under serious scrutiny.

On the island, billionaires, celebrity models, and Abigail realise that ‘being rich’ affords no real advantage. The survivors, fighting for their own survival, discover that they are near to an expensive luxury resort on the island. Yaya celebrates their good fortune, but Abigail realises she will soon have to relinquish the position of influence that she has learnt to value. The film ends as personal dynamics surface to push the survivors to take advantage of their predicament, in whatever way they can. The film’s final scenes hint strongly at what is likely to occur.

This film’s satire of the rich is highly provocative, and one scene guarantees instant fame for the film. That scene is 18 minutes long, and shows violent sea sickness and diarrhoea, projectile vomiting, and body fluids emanating from multiple body orifices following a dinner hosted by the ship’s captain. The scene is vivid, impactful, crude and excessive. It is up to viewers to decide whether scenes like it are marvellously satirical, mean-spirited, terribly funny, or very distasteful. Whatever the answer, Ostlund works hard to bring class tensions crudely to fever pitch, and he succeeds. Rivers of excrement flow through the ship’s corridors and down its steps, and vomit and excrement saturate the passengers. This is a film where a loving husband grieves over his dead wife, after first removing her expensive jewellery.

This is an art-house film that critiques the world of the rich in a totally uninhibited way. It targets materialism, excessive wealth, and delivers its messages roughly for cinematic effect. Its black humour both fascinates and repels. The film sharply demonstrates the shallowness of the culture of the idle rich, and it engages in gross comedy to do that. In a highly original way Östlund shows no fear to direct along paths other directors have hesitated to tread.