Brutal class satire ‘Triangle of Sadness’ wins Cannes Palme d’Or

The most moving part of the ceremony was the best actress award that went to Iranian Zar Amir Ebrahimi.

Zar Amir-Ebrahimi after being awarded best actress for Holy Spider. Picture: AFP

A viciously sharp satire about class conflict, with an already-infamous vomiting and defecating scene, won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival overnight Saturday, the second time Swedish director Ruben Ostlund has won the prize.

Triangle of Sadness puts Ostlund among a select group of two-time winners of the top prize at Cannes. He first scooped the Palme in 2017 for The Square.

Now firmly established as cinema’s king of cringe, Ostlund, 48, takes a scalpel to bourgeois niceties. This time he turned his gaze on fashion models and the ultra-rich, who find their status suddenly undermined when disaster strikes a cruise ship.

An extended sequence of projectile vomiting and violent diarrhoea on the ship quickly became the talk of the festival after its premiere last week, leaving viewers either howling with laughter or turning green.

Accepting the award, Ostlund said he wanted audiences to be entertained but also “to ask themselves questions, to go out after the screening and have something to talk about”.

The most moving part of the ceremony was the best actress award that went to Iranian Zar Amir Ebrahimi, forced to flee her country 16 years ago following a smear campaign over her love life.

Ruben Ostlund celebrates his second Palme d’Or at Cannes on Saturday night. Picture: AFP

She played a journalist in Holy Spider, tracking a man who murders prostitutes in the holy city of Mashhad.

“I have come a long way to be on this stage tonight,” said Ebrahimi, who now lives in Paris. “It was not an easy story.

“This film is about women, it’s about their bodies, it’s a movie full of faces, hair, hands, feet, breasts, sex — everything that is impossible to show in Iran.”

It was a strong night for Asian cinema with best director going to South Korea’s Park Chan-wook for Decision to Leave, about a detective falling for his murder suspect. The best actor award went to Song Kang-ho — famous as the father in the Oscar-winning Parasite — for his performance in the touching adoption drama Broker by Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda.

Members of the Jury of the Official Selection, Norwegian film director Joachim Trier, Indian actress Deepika Padukone and Iranian director Asghar Farhadi arrive for the Closing Ceremony of the 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, southern France. Picture: AFP

The runner-up Grand Prix was split between 32-year-old Belgian Lukas Dhont and French veteran Claire Denis. Dhont’s Close is a tender portrait of two boys facing bullying as they grapple with their budding sexuality, while Denis won for Stars at Noon, a love story set against political tensions in Central America.

The third-place Jury Prize was shared between The Eight Mountains, about a lifelong friendship in the Italian Alps; and the festival’s most radical entry, EO, a movie told entirely from the point of view of a donkey, from 84-year-old Pole Jerzy Skolimowski.

To mark the 75th jubilee edition of the 12-day festival, a special prize was awarded to Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who have twice won the Palme d’Or and were back in competition with the well-received migrant drama Tori and Lokita.

AFP