Filthy rich on screen: Why the antics of wealthy people fascinate us in times of economic turmoil

As Ruben Östlund’s biting satirical comedy, ‘Triangle of Sadness’, about obnoxious billionaires on an ocean cruise becomes a huge hit at Cannes, Geoffrey Macnab looks back at films about the uber-rich and says it’s a topic filmmakers return to again and again in times of inflation and soaring bills

Harris Dickinson as aspiring model Carl and Charlbi Dean as Yaya, his influencer girlfriend, who end up on a luxury cruise with billionaires in Cannes hit ‘Triangle of Sadness’ (Platform Production)

It’s not your average ocean cruise. A scrawny aspiring male model, Carl (Harris Dickinson from The Kingsman), and his influencer girlfriend, Yaya (Charlbi Dean), somehow end up on a huge luxury yacht alongside an assortment of billionaires, each more obnoxious than the other. There’s a sweet old English couple who look and sound as if they’re on leave from The Archers but they turn out to be arms manufacturers. There’s an obese man who has made his fortune selling fertiliser. Various Russians are on the voyage too. Welcome aboard Triangle of Sadness, the hit film which received an eight-minute standing ovation at its Cannes premiere last Saturday night. The festival audience loved the way that Swedish director Ruben Östlund set about skewering the filthy rich.

It’s easy to understand why the audience enjoyed the film so much. In a Cannes competition full of forbidding European and Asian arthouse films, here is a movie that sets out to make audiences laugh, as well as ponder the metaphysical meaninglessness of existence.

The storytelling tone is similar to that of HBO’s TV series, The White Lotus, which was set in an exclusive Hawaiian hotel, where a group of white privileged travellers soaked up the sun in luxury, before their lives unravelled. In Triangle of Sadness too, the wealthy guests treat the staff in a toe-curlingly patronising and high-handed fashion. They pretend to befriend them but their contempt for the maids, waiters, and spa workers is obvious. Then, on the night the drunken Marxist captain (Woody Harrelson) finally throws his welcome dinner, a storm hits. One moment the guests are eating oysters, and the next they are projectile vomiting.