Where the Crawdads Sing

 

Director Olivia Newman

Producer Reese Witherspoon with lead cast

cinematographer Polly Morgan with Daisy Edgar-Jones

Mark and Delia Owens

Author Delia Owens

Delia Owens

Newman, Witherspoon,Edgar-Jones,Taylor John Smith, and Owens

WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING    C                                                                                     USA  (125 mi)  2022  ‘Scope  d: Olivia Newman

Sometimes I feel so invisible, I wonder if I’m here at all.                                                               —Kya (Daisy Edgar-Jones)

A cinematic interpretation of the best-selling novel by Delia Owens, topping The New York Times bestseller list for two years in a row in 2019 and 2020, making her fiction debut at the age of 70, with a script written by Lucy Alibar, who seems to have a thing for movies set in southern states, having previously written the Oscar-nominated screenplay for the southern Gothic depiction in Benh Zeitlin’s 2012 Top Ten Films of the Year: #1 Beasts of the Southern Wild, and while filmed in Louisiana, this one is set in the marshlands of North Carolina, near a fictional town called Barkley Cove.  Produced and championed by actress Reese Witherspoon, who advocates female-centric stories, gushing endlessly about how much she loves the novel, describing it as “a love letter to growing up in the South,” with the popular novel selling 22 million copies, Excerpt from Where the Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens, part coming-of-age novel and part crime drama, intertwining issues of law, race, gender, morality, and murder, but it is not without controversy, as part of author Delia Owens’ hidden past has come to light, having been involved in a real-life murder case with her now-estranged husband Mark Owens and his son Christopher.  Like the protagonist in the story, Owens had a lifelong love of nature and wildlife, having studied biology at the University of Georgia, where she met her husband Mark, receiving a degree in zoology before obtaining a doctorate in animal behavior from the University of California at Davis, both avid conservationists moving to Africa to study animals in their natural habitat, spending more than twenty years there, writing several books and articles for professional journals, yet what they really found deplorable was the rampant poaching of elephants and rhinoceroses in Zambia who were senselessly killed for illegal tusks and horns that could be sold on the black market.  Desperate to stop this bloody practice, their activism grew more militant, seeing themselves as guardians of the wildlife, instilling a white savior approach to policing the Zambian wildlife preserves, with Mark and his son conducting airborne raids against poaching camps, where they were emboldened enough to call an ABC News show Turning Point to follow them on one of their raids, with their cameras capturing footage of a suspected black African poacher who was actually shot on camera, wounded initially, followed by several more rounds coming from offscreen until he was dead, which aired in a documentary special entitled Deadly Game: The Mark and Delia Owens Story on March 30, 1996.  An in-depth investigative article was written by Jeffrey Goldberg from The New Yorker, March 29, 2010, The Hunted | The New Yorker, where he actually interviewed the cameraman, Chris Everson, who shot the TV footage, who identified Christopher as the shooter responsible for the deadly rounds.  Owens rarely discusses this matter in public, having distanced herself from the event and the participants, simply claiming she was not involved in the shooting, though she and the others are still wanted for questioning by the Zambian police, as the body has never been found, evidently dropped from a helicopter into a nearby lagoon, likely devoured by crocodiles, with all three of them leaving the country immediately afterwards and have never returned.  One of the things that stands out is that the 2018 novel echoes many of the same themes from Delia Owens’ life in Zambia, drawing on her experience of living in the wilderness, cut off from society, with eerie similarities to the murder there, while also including a pattern of perpetuating racial stereotypes.  Even the jailhouse cat whom the protagonist befriends while awaiting trial is named after a Zambian man, Sunday Justice, who once worked in the Owens’ camp as a cook.  This is simply the backdrop to the film, which became a hot topic when Taylor Swift wrote an Instagram post that she was a big fan of the book, adding eyes to the project, writing that she “wanted to create something haunting and ethereal to match this mesmerizing story,” writing a song that plays over the end credits, Taylor Swift - Carolina (From The Motion Picture “Where The ... YouTube (2:53), using mostly women in key creative positions, directed by Olivia Newman, who has a Master’s degree in film from Columbia University.

A film that screams Hallmark made-for-TV movie where women are a central focus, with parallels to the trial sequence in Robert Mulligan’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), while also recalling Mary Steenburgen in Martin Ritt’s CROSS CREEK (1983), a fictionalized adaptation of a trip to the back woods of Florida in the 1930’s where author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Yearling, based in part on Rawlings’ 1942 memoir Cross Creek, yet also Andrei Konchalovsky’s SHY PEOPLE (1987), a Faulknerian story set in the back bayous of southern Louisiana.  With a production budget of $24 million, this is a story about abandonment, domestic abuse and neglect, the long-lasting impact of trauma, the power of literacy and friendship, and the wild, beautiful spaces of the marsh, where the naturalistic setting is the film’s calling card and is the dominant aspect overshadowing all else, WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING – First 10 Minutes YouTube (9:57), although it’s hard to miss a flying CGI heron in the opening sequence that transports us into the marsh, opening in 1969 with a dead body discovered at the bottom of a 63-foot tall observational fire tower, with the police attempting to discover if the victim was intentionally pushed or whether it was accidental.  “A swamp knows all about death, and doesn’t necessarily define it as tragedy, certainly not a sin.”  Moving back and forth between different periods, with the changing timelines shown on the screen, another flashback to the early 1950’s reveals a backwoods family living along a pristine marsh with an alcoholic and abusive father, whose violence against his wife and kids drives them away from the home one by one, leaving ten-year old Kya Clark (Jojo Regina) alone after her father leaves, creating a series of improbable events, where she is forced to raise herself in that isolated swamp accessible only by boat traffic, with no electricity or running water.  Kya is the lead protagonist, much like Delia Owens, a naturalist and loner, shunned by the neighboring town and community, who view her only with derision and contempt, disdainfully referred to as the “Marsh girl,” mocked for her poverty and ridiculed out of school on her very first day, leaving her unable to read or write as she grows up, instead she spends her time observing and drawing the natural wildlife, especially the birds, developing an extraordinary artistic talent, where her shack is lined with these watercolors.  She is also a curious collector of feathers, shells, leaves, flowers, and other wild things, assembling quite a collection, where her home becomes a repository of these discovered items, like a “glass menagerie.”  Her only friends in town are a black couple running a general store, Mabel and Jumpin’ Madison, (Charlene Michael Hyatt and Sterling Macer Jr.), who assume the role of guardians once all her family has left, the only ones really looking out for her, and she survives by selling them mussels.  Based on her outsider status, ostracized and reviled by the community, where she pretty much just keeps to herself, she is the likely suspect in the opening murder, with the police arresting her, building a case solely on circumstantial evidence, yet her name is dragged through the mud all over town, where the only townsperson willing to look through the glaring wall of prejudice is retired attorney Tom Milton (David Strathairn).  There is a stark contrast between the purity of innocence that Kya represents, completely immersed in the world of the marsh, befriending the wildlife, her one and only real friend, where her moral compass, social expectations, and concept of justice are shaped by observing the natural world, while the real dangers and threats come from the contaminating influences of town.  Where most individuals would struggle with isolation and self-preservation, Kya learned to thrive, enjoying every tiny aspect of nature, learning that everything is interconnected, all in harmony with the elements.  Once she’s older, blossoming into British actress Daisy Edgar-Jones, requiring a dialect coach to learn a southern accent, she eloquently narrates the story through a series of continuing voiceovers, adding a literary aspect along with wisdom beyond her years, and a perspective that is all her own, something of a wild child, yet restrained and self-reflective, never looking dirty or unkempt, with no sign whatsoever of bugs or mosquitoes out in the marsh, which is a bit of a mystery, seemingly impossible, so viewers are equally transported into a world of make-believe, which is sumptuously shot in ‘Scope by Polly Morgan, with music by Mychael Danna.

Equally improbable is a series of two drastically different love interests, neither one fully fleshed out, feeling more like movie characters, expressed through flashback sequences as Kya languishes in prison awaiting her trial, as Kya is befriended by Tate Walker (Taylor John Smith), having run into him throughout her childhood fishing in the marsh, finally meeting him out in the woods, lured by feathers left behind on an old tree stump, both sharing a common interest in nature, but he’s about to head off to college to study biology, but before he does he lends her books and teaches her to read and write, even writing down names of publishers that she can send her drawings off to for a possible book, providing another potential source of income.  Both seem inseparable, but his father warns him that rumors about them could jeopardize his future.  He heads off early for a job working in the biology lab, but promises to return on the 4th of July, asking her to meet him, but when the night arrives he’s a no show, leaving her utterly devastated, Where the Crawdads Sing (2022) - Tate Doesn't Come Back ... YouTube (3:09), where her many years of loneliness only accentuate the excruciating feeling of loss, “Being alone is a pain whose vastness is so great you can hear echoes.”  Miraculously, one of the publishers comes through, enthusiastically supporting her work, where the money she earns actually allows her to buy up all the land around the property, ensuring that it’s not stolen out from under her by developers, who are planning luxury condos out in the marsh.  Years later she begins a relationship with Chase Andrews, played by Harris Dickinson from Eliza Hittman’s Beach Rats (2017) and Ruben Östlund’s Triangle of Sadness (Sans Filtre) (2022), a pompous and promiscuous football star who is something of a charmer and sweet talker, used to getting everything he wants, and he wants Kya.  While viewers can spot a cad immediately, Kya is not so worldly, and is more easily ensnared, with next to nothing known about this man, often taking her feelings for granted for his own sexual pleasure, where he seems to manipulate her at every turn, even making plans for marriage without even asking her, but he does find a rare shell that she makes into a necklace and gives back to him, which he never takes off, but the real kicker happens when she sees him in town with another girl who’s engaged to be his wife.  This deception hits like a ton of bricks, where she really doesn’t want to have anything more to do with him, but he doesn’t take no for an answer, drunkenly having his way with her, punching her in the face and forcing himself on her, violently raping her, where she has to beat him in the head with a rock to get him off of her.  She had seen this violent behavior before with her father, “One thing I learned from Pa, these men must have the last punch,” where destruction is a way of punctuating their pent-up rage and anger, as he ends up trashing her home, with destroyed drawings strewn all over the place.  Shortly afterwards she is arrested for his murder, though she was in another town visiting with her publishers for the first time face to face, celebrating yet another published book, but the prosecutor believes she could conceivably have disguised herself while taking a night bus back to Barkley Cove and back again with none of the publishers noticing her absence.  Nonetheless, it’s a disturbing time, turning into an extended trial sequence, where the victim is none other than Chase Andrews (Owens’ version of a poacher), a local big shot, as his parents are loaded with money, where it’s their influence that is driving the trial, literally demanding her conviction after that necklace he was wearing goes missing at the time of his death, suggesting only Kya would have any real interest.  The direction of this film is simply unremarkable, with problematic characters, as Kya is overly saccharine and sweet, even saintly, while the men in her life are predictably one-dimensional, and the supporting characters in town couldn’t be more diabolically stereotypical, with the entire town literally sneering at this girl, treating her with nothing but contempt, preferring to believe she’s an inferior uncivilized being out in the marsh, where they don’t begin to understand or appreciate who she really is, much more intelligent and morally complex than they give her credit for.  It’s something of a sentimentalized mystery movie, where small-town prejudice is a prevailing theme, but despite a reverence for nature, with wild creatures doing what they need to do in order to survive, it’s a tepid, overly sanitized and simplistic rendering that is never fully believable.   

Triangle of Sadness (Sans Filtre)

 

Director Ruben Östlund

Östlund with Woody Harrelson

 

 

 

TRIANGLE OF SADNESS (Sans Filtre)                  C-                                                           Sweden  France  Great Britain  Germany  Turkey  Greece  (147 mi)  2022  ‘Scope  d: Ruben Östlund

No, it’s not very complicated.  It’s not OK to exploit another human being and pay them a s*** salary.  And it’s not OK to make a huge profit, using other people.  It is that simple.         —Ruben Östlund defending his film in an interview from The Independent, Triangle of Sadness director Ruben Östlund interview 

Something has shifted in the cinematic priorities of this director as his films have become more prominently featured in film festivals, playing exclusively to the festival audiences, offering them smug satires on the rich and famous, allowing them to giggle with delight at the thought that someone is making fun of them.  It’s the European answer to Hollywood, where the Academy loves to reward films that comment on the industry itself, as if they need something to signify their sense of self-importance in the world, existing in a universe that typically revolves around themselves.  Östlund has gone from making small sociological observations that were largely nondramatic experiments with non-professionals, low-budget films like INVOLUNTARY (2008) or Play (2011), where the latter was particularly provocative, but were seen by very few around the world.  The worldwide critical acclaim for Force Majeure (Turist) (2014) changed all that, becoming an international breakthrough leading to much larger budgets, where his observational films have become festival spectacles, social media events, with audiences reveling at the way the director mocks contemporary society, developing a preoccupation with the upending of hierarchical social constructs, chastising the art world in The Square (2017), a wicked satire which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, with a rollicking finale that made audiences squirm in discomfort, though does anyone actually remember what it was about?  And now, as the new media darling, he’s become a Barnum & Bailey showman, returning with another ostentatious parody of cultural self-infatuation, with its rush for instant stardom from social media postings on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, or Facebook, where taking selfies dominates the landscape.  As he twists the knife with savage takes on society’s latest misadventures, his sneering tone may be a comic delight to some, a welcome reprieve from the safety of convention, yet it may be crudely discomforting to others, particularly the gloating relish of Östlund’s smug, self-satisfaction, where what interests him is structural irregularities, placing the square peg in the round hole, a rationale that doesn’t exist, but his calculating theatrical expression depends upon it.  Constructed like a lab experiment, his comedy of Marxist farce and mocking contempt feels shamelessly pretentious, a sadistically overblown burlesque featuring thoroughly unsympathetic characters.  The problem with this kind of film is the utter superficiality of tone, where its featured topic du jour may be passé by tomorrow, so what are we really left with?  That, in itself, may well be the film’s defining legacy, an empty charade of obnoxiousness taken to the extreme, throwing caution to the wind with grandiose hyperbole, where posterity is an afterthought.  My guess is people won’t remember this film either.  Let’s not forget the Cannes Film Festival is set along the glamorous beach resorts of the French Riviera, the prestigious Côte d’Azur, and is the annual setting for celebratory, invitation-only VIP parties for the jet-setting, superyacht crowd in black-tie tuxedos and chic evening dresses, featuring celebrities, photogenic supermodels, and some of the richest people on the planet, where Jury President Steven Spielberg actually watched many of the festival films aboard his own prized superyacht, and that a Cannes Jury awarded the Palme d’Or to William Wyler’s FRIENDLY PERSUASION in 1956, a largely forgotten war film, overlooking Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (Det sjunde inseglet), Bresson’s A Man Escaped (Un Condamné à Mort s'est échappé), and Fellini’s NIGHTS OF CABIRIA, with Bergman and Bresson never receiving the top prize, which is hard to fathom.   

There isn’t a single authentic phrase uttered anywhere in this entire film, turning this mostly into nonsense, with some of it borderline unwatchable, becoming a venture into a grossly exaggerated and supremely artificial reality, creating a sociological dilemma that isn’t remotely authentic, with a contemptuous degree of overkill that can be brutal, where we’ve seen this sort of film made before in Lina Wertmüller’s Swept Away (Travolti da un insolito destino nell'azzurro mare d'agosto) (1974), an equally polarizing class exposé that shocked the feminist movement at the time, yet remains a substantial upgrade over this wretchedly awful film.  The irony is it’s not nearly as hilarious or as culturally impactful as Marin Ade’s 2017 Top Ten List #2 Toni Erdmann, which was overlooked and completely neglected at Cannes that year, receiving only a Fipresci prize, though it was the most powerful film of the entire festival, and arguably the best non-winner of the entire decade.  Moving from a ski resort, the contemporary art world, and now to a luxury cruise, this new film takes the cake for being grotesquely overrated, a disservice to the other filmmakers who made better films, though the cinematography by Fredrik Wenzel employs Haneke-like precision in his compositions, but Östlund has become a festival darling, awarded a second Palme d’Or at Cannes, while a director as formidable as Krzysztof Kieślowski never even received one, placing him in exclusive company, joining the ranks of Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Haneke, Shohei Imamura, Bille August, the Dardenne brothers, Emir Kusturica, Alf Sjöberg, and Ken Loach, while also receiving an 8-minute standing ovation at the end of the film, with his last three films all receiving awards at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, ending his acceptance speech by leading the festival audience in a primal scream, a ritual he began with his first win.  While his sixth feature is by far his most expensive, it is also his weakest, as it thrives on our worst impulses, revisiting territory already explored in Bong Joon-ho’s Palme d’or and Academy Award winning Parasite (Gisaengchung) (2019), yet is actually more reminiscent of the stupidly infantile comedy of the Farrelly Brother’s Movie 43 (2013), which at the time was commonly referred to as the worst film of the year.  Any assertions that this is like the scathing satires of Buñuel in the 70’s, as some critics have suggested, are simply misguided, as this lacks the reflective depth and Surrealist drive “to explode the social order, to transform life itself.”  A more apt comparison might be the derisive tone found in the outrageous social satires of controversial Serbian filmmaker Dušan Makavejev (without the intellectualism), who irreverently skewered authoritarianism and sexual repression.  Hard to believe this one in particular has received so much success, as the centerpiece is an extended barfing sequence on a luxury cruise, where passengers are urged to keep feeding themselves to avoid the ill-effects of sea sickness, so they stuff themselves on champagne and caviar, resulting in projectile vomiting and exploding diarrhea, with toilets overflowing, flooding the passageways, where they are literally swimming in their own filth, a wretchedly chaotic sequence that goes on for half an hour, where at some point it’s difficult to keep viewing the screen, yet that is the intended result, described as the most disgusting film of 2022 by the BBC, while at press screenings the audience was reportedly offered barf bags, planting the seeds of nausea and tumultuous discord, where making the film as uncomfortable as possible is the goal.  Yet in order to film this scene, they borrowed the $250 million dollar superyacht Christina O that once belonged to Aristotle Onassis, who upholstered the bar stools in whale foreskin!, catering only to the obscenely rich since 1954, including the likes of Winston Churchill and Marilyn Monroe.  While Östlund is skewering the habits of the filthy rich, it’s a very curious tendency to rely upon exceedingly bad taste in order to make his point, and even more mystifying that audiences are lapping it up. 

Opening with the shallow lives of fashion industry models (Östlund’s partner is fashion photographer Sina Görcz), the story centers around Carl, Harris Dickinson from Eliza Hittman’s Beach Rats (2017), and Yaya (Charlbi Dean, a South African actress who tragically died shortly after the film’s release at the age of 32), as they bicker over the most mundane details, arguing over who pays the dinner check, turning it into a battle of the sexes power struggle, though Carl is clearly overcome by his male insecurities, returning to that familiar theme of toxic masculinity (his third film in a row), bathing it in the neutrality of fake etiquette, extending the argument well beyond the point of mattering anymore.  Yet what this establishes is that they view one another purely in economic terms, valuing who is worth more, and as a female model, she is paid considerably more, though her value increases on the arm of a handsome male escort, which becomes the foundation of their relationship, and then suddenly it’s the man pleading for equality.  What really matters, however, is their superficial attraction to one another, as it’s all based on physical appearance, the stock and trade of their industry, spending all their time attracting followers on social media, posting pictures of themselves, exaggerating the shallowness of a narcissistic culture that thrives on beauty, yet their Instagram influencer status wins them a free trip aboard a luxury yacht, providing they send photos of her posing with food that she won’t actually eat, which will be seen by millions of Instagram followers.  An exposé of wealth, privilege, and beauty, the voyage is a veritable ship of fools, defined by the self-indulgence of pampered billionaires, becoming an open critique of capitalism and its excesses, as the young couple mingles with much older business tycoons whose accumulated wealth is represented by an elderly English couple who turn out to be graciously polite arms dealers, the utterly harmless Winston and Clementine (after Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine), claiming their “products have been employed in upholding democracy all over the world,” where their best-selling item happens to be the hand grenade, lamenting the United Nations ban on landmines has deprived them of one of their most lucrative products, making a not so subtle dig that defense contractors are escorting us down the path to Armageddon.  While the captain would rather stay locked in his quarters and get blind drunk than mix with passengers that he despises, he can be heard cranking up the socialist anthem The Internationale, The Internationale "Интернационал" - Russian Version YouTube (3:59), every time a frazzled chief steward, Paula (Vicki Berlin), comes knocking on his door trying to sober him up, where she is left to run the show, painstakingly catering to the fruitless whims of their guests.  A sense of entitlement is the most prominent theme, with boring guests making the most outlandish requests, with one woman reminding the captain that the sails are dirty and need to be cleaned.  When he counters that it’s a motorized vessel and doesn’t have any sails, she will not let it go until he finally agrees that the sails will be cleaned immediately.  This smirking tone of absurdity defines this picture, as jars of Nutella are flown in by helicopter just because one passenger has requested it, while another keeps insisting that one of the personal attendants jump into the pool joining her, literally demanding that she enjoy herself, completely disregarding whatever she may actually need to do, and persists until the entire crew is seen taking the plunge, acquiescing to every ludicrous passenger demand.  

Östlund’s first film spoken in English (his next will be as well), which means more viewers, it swept all the awards it was nominated for at the European Awards, Triangle of Sadness triumphs at the 35th European Film Awards, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenwriter, and Best Actor (Zlatko Burić), where Östlund’s defining feature is extending scenes well beyond the comfort level, which may explain the nearly two and a half hour duration, yet what passes for a satiric assault on the excessive indulgences of the super rich is really little more than window dressing, never getting below the surface or offering much to say, where lampooning the wealthy seems like an easy target.  When The Square was released, Östlund described himself in interviews as a socialist, claiming both his parents were Swedish Communists, bragging that his mother is still active in the Communist Party, while his brother is a right-wing conservative, suggesting there was plenty of dialogue around the family dinner table, expressing surprise that some of the most hostile criticism came from Libération, the French publication founded by left-wing figureheads Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in the wake of 60’s protest movements, Ruben Östlund: ‘I worry that left-wing people misunderstand Marx’: 

“They called the film right-wing and very conservative.  For me that is interesting because they are reading the images from a sentimental place.  They want a sentimental portrait of poor people.  They want more solidarity between poor people.  They want poor people to be a community. It’s almost as if certain left-wing people have forgotten about Marx.  They have a very upper-middle class way of thinking about poor people.  That they have a community and true values.  That’s bullshit!  Poor people are living in a tragedy.  And their awful circumstances can create bad behaviours.  I worry sometimes that some left-wing people misunderstand Marx.”

As if to remedy that unflattering portrait, this film goes even further, having already tackled modern art and social inequality, this specifically targets the absurd lives of the über-elite, suggesting the wealthy are so busy pampering themselves, forcing others to cater to their every whim, nothing else matters, as they lose all perspective, remaining oblivious to the needs of others, who simply don’t exist, while remaining incapable of doing anything for themselves, as they simply pay others to do what they need.  Their grotesque wealth is contrasted with the poor working stiffs in the bowels of the ship, a METROPOLIS (1927) inspired underworld characterized by the menial labor of cleaning workers and porters, mostly people of color, who are never allowed to share the same space with the white guests on the top decks, revisiting that Altmanesque Gosford Park (2001) upstairs/downstairs scenario.  The cooks are seen tirelessly working to piped-in music of The Internationale, a fantasy of working class solidarity, while one of the most ridiculous verbal exchanges is between the perpetually drunken ship captain (Woody Harrelson) and Dimitri (Zlatko Burić, wild-haired and overly flamboyant), an equally drunk Russian fertilizer tycoon (“I sell shit,” modeled after Russian oligarch and billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev), playing drinking games as they trade lines quoting Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher, among others, pitting the values of a Marxist American sea captain against a capitalist Russian oligarch, each in their own way regurgitating hollow catch phrases and political slogans that have been rendered meaningless by the utter absurdity of their drunken rampage.  Growing ever more delirious, they co-opt the ship’s intercom system, forcing the passengers (and audiences) to listen to this gobbledygook, extending into the surreal, reducing the profound to sheer nonsense, as they may as well have been quoting Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll.  By the end of the film the roles are reversed after a mysterious circumstance leaves a few of them washed ashore onto a deserted island, leaving a Filipino toilet scrubber (Dolly de Leon) in command, as the privileged are suddenly at her mercy, the only one with the skills to survive in the wild, becoming increasingly tyrannical and drunk with power, training them to bow down and capitulate to her, turning them all into her personal slaves, where they quickly relearn their roles in the social hierarchy, sucking up to her for special favors.  It’s a bizarre fantasy that revisits the Lina Wertmüller theme, but expands from an oddly dysfunctional couple into a small community, a shocking display of base human instincts, as expressed in the Darwinian universe of Lord of the Flies, veering into the reality TV show Survivor, where you can be voted off the island.  The best thing to say about this film is the clever use of a musical interlude, Sonnerie de Ste. Geneviève du Mont-de-Paris - YouTube (7:53), which by itself provides a wry commentary through its interesting use of counterpoint.  Designed as a scathing, over the top portrait of the filthy-rich global elite, it has no politics beyond mocking extreme wealth and power, with suggestions that all relationships are exploitive, whether business or personal, with Östlund presenting himself as the latest huckster and snake oil salesman selling us a bill of goods.  Yet there’s apparently an audience for this sort of thing, couched as a working class revenge fantasy, where it’s all about payback, getting back at tyrannical bosses and powerful figureheads making all the decisions without any of our input, always placing themselves in the most advantageous positions, rewarding their friends, while leaving everyone else out in the cold.  There’s no denying there are people like that, but this hollow comeuppance is not particularly funny, drawing on standard cliché’s, where there’s no weight behind the mockery, drowning in a garish caricature that can feel empty and exhausting instead of exhilarating.