History Film / TriangleOfSadness

* MortonsFork: Alissa's position when Vera tells her to get into the pool; do it, and potentially get fired for slacking off on the job...or refuse and potentially get fired for saying no to a guest.

* AmbiguousEnding: [[spoiler:The film ends after Yaya has discovered a resort on the island on a hike with Abigail, who has appointed herself captain of the castaways. Abigail is holding a rock above Yaya, clearly contemplating murder to get rid of Yaya and silence the truth that rescue is within reach, since she wants Yaya's boyfriend and relishes the first power she's ever had in her life. We hear Yaya talking to Abigail with remarks that could pacify or incense her, and see Carl running through the woods to find Yaya. Whether Abigail kills Yaya or not, or whether the truth about the resort is discovered, or what happens if Carl finds the scene in either outcome, is not clear. WordOfGod states that Abigail does lill Yaya, but this is not shown in the film alone]].

* AmbiguousEnding: [[spoiler:The film ends after Yaya has discovered a resort on the island on a hike with Abigail, who has appointed herself captain of the castaways. Abigail is holding a rock above Yaya, clearly contemplating murder to get rid of Yaya and silence the truth that rescue is within reachz since she wants Yaya's boyfriend and relishes the first power she's ever had in her life. We hear Yaya talking to Abigail with remarks that could both pacify and incense her, without actually knowing for sure if the words are imagined ir not, and see Carl running through the woods to find Yaya. Whether Abigail kills Yaya or not, or whether the truth about the resort is discovered, or what happens if Carl finds the scene in either outcome, is not clear]].

* AmbiguousEnding: [[spoiler:The film ends before Carl could find Yaya after she and Abigail take a hike and discover the island resort. The final sequence of the movie shows him running through the trees. One possibility is that Abigail has killed Yaya and after returning to the boat she told Carl that Yaya fell and struck her head while hiking across to the other side of the island. The second possibility is that he came across the vendor on the island, who told him the island is a vacation resort. Realizing his worst possible fears that Abigail might try to kill Yaya, he's running to save Yaya.]].

* CarpetOfVirility: A handsome, bearded support staff member on the ship takes his shirt off, revealing his hairy chest, and gets mildly flirty with Yaya, who responds positively, prompting Carl to get jealous. It's implied he regularly does this on purpose.

* FoodPorn: Various close-up shots of SnootyHauteCuisine dishes during the Captain's dinner.

* FullCircleRevolution: After upending the social classes and becoming "the captain," Abigail becomes just as despotic and exploitative over her minions as the rich were back in the real world. She goes as far as [[spoiler:murdering Yaya to maintain her power]].

* HeKnowsTooMuch: [[spoiler:Abigail apparently kills Yaya, partially to cover up the fact they're really on a luxury resort doesn't spread to the rest of the survivors.]]

** Gender roles. Male models are lampooned for receiving less money than their female counterparts. In the fashion show, the huge marquee at one point flashes the slogan, "Ladies First." Carl gets into a fight with Yaya over their income disparity and broadens the argument into gender roles. The cab driver tells Carl that he needs to fight Yaya, or he'll be her slave. On the ship, Dimitry attends the cruise with his wife ''and'' his mistress. On the island, Abigail creates a "matriarchy" where she rules and the men must be subservient to her. Carl becomes her kept man, and the other men hunt a donkey in an attempt to reassert their masculinity, but they end up crying and hugging over the trauma. While the able-bodied women bond and assert power over the males, they also disregard the disabled Therese, effectively barring her from their matriarchy. Later, [[spoiler:Therese tries to get help from a passing seller, who mistakes her mannerisms as wanting to sleep with him.]]
** Class divisions. The reporter makes jokes about the different campaigns of cheap "smiley" clothing lines and "grumpy" clothing lines that only are for rich people. Carl and Yaya's relationship suffers because it's he's financially dependent on her. At the fashion show, a group of people are kicked out of their front-row seats for some [=VIPs=], and then everyone must move down one seat so they can sit together, pushing Carl out of his seat. The fashion show itself ironically begins with an "Everyone's Equal" marquee. On the ship, Paula tells the service staff to say "yes" to everything the rich guests say so they'll get a big tip. The menial support staff are lower in status than even the service staff. Carl feels guilty after accidentally getting one support staff member summarily fired for taking his shirt off. Overall, Carl feels out of place among the guests, since he and Yaya got the tickets for free and aren't rich like the others. In bed with Yaya, Carl roleplays as a [[CheatingWithTheMilkman pool boy who sleeps with his wealthy client]]. Dimitry and the captain quote back and forth about Marxism and capitalism. On the island, the traditional social roles are upended, and the menial Abigail becomes "the captain" because she has all the survival skills.

** A RunningGag is that of a Finnish lady who keeps complaining that the sails on the ship are dirty. This would already be a trivial complaint, but the ship doesn't even have sails. She later brings this up to the ''Captain of the ship'', and when he points out there are no sails, she instead doubles down and has to be politely ushered off by guest services before she can raise a bigger stink.

* RuthlessModernPirates: As if things couldn't get any worse for the luxury yacht, it's attacked by a gang of modern pirates, who blow it up and sink it for good.

* HeKnowsTooMuch: [[spoiler:Abigail supposedly kills Yaya so the knowledge of the luxury resort on the island does to spread to the rest of the survives.]]

** Jarmo is a socially awkward bore who is flabbergasted when two attractive women volunteer to take a photo with him. Even when trying to party with them, he declines Yaya's repeated invitations to dance, feeling too embarrassed.

* BlackComedy: As one would expect from a Ruben Östlund film. A yacht is attacked by pirates and sinks at sea, leading to the few survivors getting in increasingly ridiculous situations after they wash up on an island. [[spoiler:When Vera's dead body washes up on the island, Dimitry weeps tears of grief -- while he is busy pulling all of Vera's jewelry off of her corpse.]]

** After the shipwreck, as Carl is trying to make sure there were other survivors and is horrified that Yaya may be dead, Dimitry gets suspicious and asks a black man (Nelson) who claims to work in the boiler room for proof. Nelson rightfully [[{{Profiling}} takes offence at the implication he's one of the pirates because he's black]], and while Carl is trying to make heads-or-tails of his situation and Yaya's condition, Nelson's chewing Dimitry out while Dimitry awkwardly insists it's only because he hadn't seen him among the crew.

* DesertedIsland: Where the survivors of the wreck wind up and are forced to create a new society to survive. [[spoiler:Only it's not deserted; the group sticks close the shore they washed up on for at least several weeks. When Yaya finally decides to venture over the mountains, she and Abigail find a luxury resort.]]

* LiteralMetaphor: When asked his business, Dimitry states, "I sell shit." But he doesn't mean he sells some random, cheap products. He literally sells fertilizer.

*** He makes friends with much of the important cast despite being [[ShadowArchetype their opposites]]: he befriends Carl and completely understands the fact he and Yaya are influencers who got on for free, because he also got lucky by being in the right place at the right time.
*** Later, he makes friends with the Captain. The Captain fucking despises him and his Reagan-worshippng Thatcherite ass at first, but Dimitry [[ActuallyPrettyFunny laughs off]] his very pointed barbs and encourages the captain, semi-ironically at first and whole-heartedly later, to deliver his Marxist rants to the entire ship and to keep writing. It's implied that Dimitry, despite loving capitalism, understands the Captain's viewpoint, because he also worked a fairly menial trade before ascending, as Captains tend to start out as simple crewmen.
*** He's the first to accuse Nelson of being a pirate, which triggers a [[CringeComedy cringeworthy argument about race while the others are trying to figure out a way to survive]], but nonetheless helps him and later happily discusses the economics of piracy towards the end of the movie.

* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: Vera's whimsical demand that the whole crew go for a swim means that the captain's dinner of highly perishable seafood goes bad and the maintenance of the engines are delayed, resulting in a catastrophic mass food poisoning and makes the boat more vulnerable to the pirates attack.
* VomitIndiscretionShot: Many of the guests fall seasick during a storm at the Captain's dinner and uncontrollably vomit (and defecate) as a result. The film quickly derails into the crew and guests sliding all over the boat covered in bile and diarrhea.

* ActuallyPrettyFunny: Dmitry finds the Captain's (at first) vicious mockery of him, which escalates from simple "don't argue with an idiot" to "first against the wall" rhetoric. He similarly laughs off the Captain trying to give him alcohol poisoning, and genuinely appreciates the Captain's Marxist writings.

** In a bleaker sense, since she only meant well, [[spoiler:Dmitry's wife, who forced the crew to take a swim and unwittingly caused the food to spoil and the engines to go kaput because there was no crew around to maintain them]], suffers the most out of all the victims of food poisoning, and the film takes extra glee in showing the storm throwing her around in her now shit-and-puke filled bathroom.

* BlackComedy: As one would expect from a Ruben Östlund film. A yacht is attacked by pirates and sinks at sea, leading to the few survivors getting in increasingly ridiculous situations after they wash up on an island. [[spoiler:When Vera's dead body washes up on the island, Dmitri weeps tears of grief -- while he is busy pulling all of Vera's jewelry off of her corpse.]]

** What kickstarts the plot is Dmitry's wife forcing an unfortunate guest services henchwoman to listen to her spiel about how she finds it awful that she's privileged, then insists the unfortunate woman join her in the pool. When the woman ''rightfully'' declines because one of her coworkers got fired and kicked off the ship for taking his shirt off in front of guests, Dmitry's wife ''has the gall to get furious'' at her for refusing and ups the ante by asking ''all'' the servicepeople on the ship to take an hour off and use their water slide... even though they're trying to make sure the food doesn't spoil or that the ship doesn't fall apart. Sure enough...

** Jarmo nervously asks Yaya and Dmitri's mistress to take a picture of him enjoying his now-solo vacation to get back at a date who ghosted him. He stumbles and stammers throughout.
** A guest services worker, Alicia, has to listen to Dmitri's wife rant about how it's unfair she was born rich. Then the wife ''insists'' Alicia join her in the pool, forcing Alicia into a MortonsFork between breaking the rules (on a ship where one of her coworkers got tossed off the ship for far less) or refusing a guest. There's a shot that drags on for half a minute of Alicia flopping between [[OhCrap a deer-in-the-headlights look]] and [[OhCrapSmile her best guest services]] smile of [[TheUnsmile terror]] that makes her look like a malfunctioning Disney animatronic.

** After the shipwreck, as Carl is trying to make sure there were other survivors and is horrified that Yaya may be dead, Dmitry gets suspicious and asks a black man (Nelson) who claims to work in the boiler room for proof. Nelson rightfully [[{{Profiling}} takes offence at the implication he's one of the pirates because he's black]], and while Carl is trying to make heads-or-tails of his situation and Yaya's condition, Nelson's chewing Dmitry out while Dmitry awkwardly insists it's only because he hadn't seen him among the crew.

* DeathOfAChild: Implied. [[spoiler:We see a baby during the disastrous Captain's dinner, and as Dmitry and the Captain fuck around and order everyone to get off the ship, a young girl is among those with life vests. We don't see them again after pirates explode the ship, and as bodies wash on shore, it's heavily implied anyone we don't see died.]]

* DistinctionWithoutADifference: As things on the ship go south, Dmitry accuses the Captain of being a commie. The Captain has to correct him: ''he's a Marxist.''

* HumansAreBastards: A common theme through Östlund's films by showing how shallow and ignorant the rich and their enablers are, but there is a moment of subversion: in the middle of [[AuthorTract his angry socialist rant]] at Dmitry and the entire ship, the Captain admits that Dmitry, and most of the people on-board, [[RousseauWasRight have good hearts who want to do right deep down]]. While the film does delight in putting the rich through the wringer, it also doesn't pull any punches in how ''miserable'' they are as things break down, and also shows the poor are just as capable of being vicious in enforcing power dynamics.

* RiddleForTheAges: [[spoiler:''Was'' Nelson a pirate? He insists that he was one of the crew who worked in the engine room, but towards the end, after Dmitri challenges him, he seems to be pretty familiar with how RuthlessModernPirates work, and isn't in the uniform of the boiler room crew.]]

* RunningGag: Dmitry repeatedly and proudly explaining he got rich by stating, "I sell shit." He does this [[spoiler:even as the ship is on the verge of going off-course and breaking down]].

* TheBermudaTriangle: Alluded to in the title and events, though instead of spooky supernatural stuff, it's rich idiots causing problems.

* SignificantName: The snooty British arms dealer and his wife are named Winston and Clementine, an obvious allusion to UsefulNotes/WinstonChurchill and his wife Clementine.

* PokemonSpeak: One of the passengers [[spoiler:and later, survivors]] of the ship is a stroke survivor who can only repeat 'Uli' (her husband) and 'in den Wolken' ("in the clouds"). Her husband clarifies she's fully cognizant, it's just that her language centers are damaged. It's implied 'in den Wolken' was the last thing she said right before she had her stroke.

* EatTheRich: A theme in the film, especially in the third act. The rich people are repeatedly shown to be clueless, useless people.
** The nice old British couple don't care at all about what product their manufacturing business makes. Carl has to ask several times before they blithely state that it's hand grenades. They also lament the UN regulations that stopped them from making land mines. [[spoiler:When Clementine spots a grenade made in her own factory, she doesn't notice that its pin is out]].
** One rich lady keeps complaining that the sails on the ship are dirty. This would already be a trivial complaint, but the ship doesn't even have sails. She later brings this up to the ''Captain of the ship'', and when he points out there are no sails, she instead doubles down and has to be politely ushered off by guest services before she can raise a bigger stink.
** Dimitry cheerfully admits that he made his fortune simply because he was in the right place at the right time. What's more, he made his fortune ''selling shit''.
** Vera is completely oblivious to how her class-upending frivolities could get Alicia in trouble and starts getting angry when Alicia tries to refuse her, ironically asserting her superior social station to force the whole staff to slide down the water slide for her amusement. [[spoiler:This results in the food poisoning incident that leaves the ship open to capture by pirates and possibly kills nearly all those on board.]]
** Jorma is a socially awkward bore who is flabbergasted when two attractive women volunteer to take a photo with him. Even when trying to party with them, he declines Yaya's repeated invitations to dance, feeling too embarrassed.
** On the island, the riches of the guests are useless, and the only person with any survival skills is Abigail, the person with the lowest station on the ship.
** Finally, Yaya's just so grateful for Abigail for saving them all and accompanying her to the other side of the island, where they find [[spoiler:it's a resort island]]. Unknown to her, a desperate and power-hungry Abigail [[spoiler:is preparing to kill her so she can keep her current kingdom]], but is clearly broken up about it... [[spoiler:until Yaya cluelessly offers her a menial position under her. Cue offscreen rock to the head.]]

** A RunningGag is that of a Finnish lady who absolutely insists to the ''Captain'' that "the sails are dirty" and must be cleaned. In the middle of an ocean in the open air. ''On a motorised yacht.''. When the Captain points this out, she doubles down and gets her husband to agree that ''there were sails''.
** The wife of war profiteer Winston fails to realise that [[spoiler:the armed grenade thrown at their feet really isn't something she should be stopping to admire and show her husband.]]

** The wife of Dmitiry absolutely insists ''everyone'' on the ship drop what they're doing and waste an hour getting into their swimsuit to take a dive into the ocean. Not only does this cause the food to go bad when the chefs and cooks have to leave the food alone at room temperature for an hour and poisons nearly everyone on board, it also causes maintenance on the ship engines to stop, which [[spoiler:leaves it easy pickings for pirates.]]
** A clueless Yaya [[spoiler:offers Abigail, who has likely spent most of her life doing menial labour for barely-there pay, another job... doing menial labour. This normally wouldn't be a problem... if Abigail wasn't about to kill her so she can keep living the good life.]]

* TheHorseshoeEffect:
** The good captain invokes this as conditions on the ship deteriorate. He admits that he's a shit Marxist by ranting and raving at billionaires while happily taking their money and shirking work to drink some more.
** Later, the film posits that when it comes down to it, [[spoiler:the poor are just as capable of being as ruthless in maintaining their power balance, but are also capable of acts of kindness and working together. Just ask Abigail, her rock, and Yaya's soon-to-be corpse.]]

* AmbiguousEnding: [[spoiler:The film ends before Carl could find Yaya after she and Abigail take a hike and discover the island resort, and likewise, the film doesn't show whether Abigail actually kills Yaya with the rock. However, the director has stated that Abigail does in fact kill Yaya]].

** In a movie that still (mostly) humanises the rich bastards it's lampooning, the only people who ''really'' deserve [[spoiler:getting maimed and thrown overboard by one of their own manufactured grenades]] are [[spoiler:the kindly couple of Winston and Clementine, who are war profiteers who think the UN is a globalist downer on their profits.]]

* ChekhovsGun: While there is no mention of their itinerary or location, we briefly see armed guards on the ship in two early scenes, suggesting that they are traveling through dangerous waters; sure enough, modern pirates attack the ship at the end of part 2. A couple who earlier admitted that they made their money from selling grenades and other explosive weapons find one the pirates toss onto the deck, and after they wonder if it was one of theirs they die as it explodes. Just to make sure we get [[EasterEgg the reference to the trope]], very loud [[Theatre/TheSeagull seagull]] cries are heard immediately after a second explosion, which sinks the ship.

* DeathOfAChild: [[spoiler:We see a baby during the disastrous Captain's dinner, and as Dmitry and the Captain fuck around and order everyone to get off the ship, a young girl is among those with life vests. We don't see them again after pirates explode the ship, and as bodies wash on shore, it's heavily implied anyone we don't see died.]]

** He makes friends with much of the important cast despite being [[ShadowArchetype their opposites]]: he befriends Carl and completely understands the fact he and Yaya are influencers who got on for free, because he also got lucky by being in the right place at the right time.
** Later, he makes friends with the Captain. The Captain fucking despises him and his Reagan-worshippng Thatcherite ass at first, but Dimitry [[ActuallyPrettyFunny laughs off]] his very pointed barbs and encourages the captain, semi-ironically at first and whole-heartedly later, to deliver his Marxist rants to the entire ship and to keep writing. It's implied that Dimitry, despite loving capitalism, understands the Captain's viewpoint, because he also worked a fairly menial trade before ascending, as Captains tend to start out as simple crewmen.
** He's the first to accuse Nelson of being a pirate, which triggers a [[CringeComedy cringeworthy argument about race while the others are trying to figure out a way to survive]], but nonetheless helps him and later happily discusses the economics of piracy towards the end of the movie.

* UncertainDoom: [[spoiler:The Captain, Ludmilla, Alicia, Darius, Uli, the woman complaining about sails, the preteen passenger, and various others onboard the ship are never seen after it sinks. While they probably died, it is possible they simply washed ashore somewhere else, remained adrift at sea, or were kidnapped for ransom by the pirates]].

* OhCrapSmile: An unfortunate hospitality worker's practiced polite smile gets twisted into one of panic when she's given the choice of [[MortonsFork getting fired for apparently shirking work to 'relax' with a guest by her demands or getting fired because she refused a guest's demand to 'relax' with her.]]

* NotQuiteDead: On the island, Jarmo sneaks up on a donkey and bashes its head with a rock. The other survivors cheer the successful kill... but it then turns out that the donkey isn't dead yet, and it makes a series of agonized noises until a horrified Jarmo finishes the job.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone:
** Carl complains to the head of hospitality that one of the workers took off his shirt to flirt with Yaya. The worker is promptly fired and taken off the ship, causing Carl to suffer a crisis of conscience.
** The ending [[spoiler:has Abigail clearly in near-tears and hesitating to kill Yaya to maintain her personal fiefdom and deny the rest of the survivors a chance to get off the island.]] It's {{subverted}} when [[spoiler:Yaya cluelessly offers her a menial job instead of true freedom and Abigail finally swings.]]

* HereWeGoAgain: Invoked in the ending. [[spoiler:Abigail, who has graduated from menial toilet cleaner to queen-saviour of the survivors, is deeply conflicted over wanting to bash Yaya's brains out after she provided companionship but is ruining her shot at keeping her little kingdom. It's only after Yaya cluelessly offers Abigail yet ANOTHER menial job that Abigail snaps...]]