- [Ruben] When I'm shooting, I do a lot of takes
on all the different camera setups
and in the end, what I do is that I tell actors
"Now we have five takes left."
The last take, then I take the whole crew
to stand behind the camera and I have a gong
and I hit that gong, you know, like, okay
everybody finish like last take and I hit the gong, boom.
And when the sound is completely silent
then you get one of the actors
to start the scene with their line.
Hello, my name is Ruben Östlund.
I'm the director and screenwriter of Triangle of Sadness.
This is Notes on a Scene.
- [Carl] You said you were gonna pay for food today.
At the end of the meal you said
Thanks, tomorrow I'll get it, I'll get it.
- [Yaya] Sure. But then you picked up the bill
and I thought you wanted to pay.
So I said Thank you, honey.
- Okay. But it was there for such a long time.
I mean
- I didn't see it.
- You didn't see it?
- This scene, the bill scene, I call it
it's actually something that happened to me and my wife
eight years ago. It was in the beginning
of our relationship. I wanted to impress her.
So I invited her to come every night.
I brought her out to dinner.
So the first night and the second night
and the third night I was always paying the bill.
But at a certain point I started to feel
like I can't play this role all the time.
I like her too much.
So I have to take the bull by the horn
and bring this up in some way.
This is a situation that I love because this is a dilemma.
The main character, Carl, he has two
or more choices and none of them are easy.
- Thank you, honey.
That's so sweet of you.
- And here we see first that Charlbi is looking at the bill.
I hope that the audiences sees that also.
And then... there.
And we all know what that means.
You should pick up the bill now, Carl.
And Charlbi Dean
had a very, very skillful way
of like sending those eyes over to Harris and
and using the pauses in the right way.
You could tell that she's really, really skillful
in when it comes to timing
and it comes to understanding the dynamics of a scene.
And here in the background we can see also
that we have the window
and in the opposite of Carl.
Carl is cornered.
He has a wall just behind his back.
But when we were shooting it, we wanted it to be that
Yaya have more space behind her back
and like in this area like that, there's much more space.
A little bit like okay
that's where the freedom is and Carl is completely cornered.
And in order to get to the freedom
you have to get through Yaya first.
First of all, I think that when we were shooting this
that it was important that you could see all of Carl's body
because it's so much in the body language that tells us
about how he's trying to deal with the situation.
We tried to put Carl a little bit more in the darkness
and with his back towards the wall and that was
in the intention of trying to show that he is cornered.
When we were shooting the shot
it was actually a little bit tighter.
He was a little bit bigger in the frame
but afterwards, I decided to digitally zoom out
a little bit because I wanted to have
in connection in the frame all of the upper part
of the body because there's still so much in the
in the body language that expresses
like the kind of awkwardness he is trying to deal with.
When I was doing the storyboard picture
I think the hand that was close to the bill
was also something that was important.
When I'm working on the script
then I like to draw storyboard pictures.
I spent quite a long time to draw these pictures
because being concentrating on drawing the storyboard
pictures makes me think about the scene
in a different way than when I'm writing the script.
I'm working with small, small details.
So if you look at the storyboard picture
you can see that his hand is in the image
but in the storyboard picture, we don't see Carl.
We only see Yaya that has the makeup mirror
in front of her face, like covering her face
in order to avoid seeing the bill.
And I enjoy so much doing these storyboard pictures
because if you want to work on the small, small details
you have to find a way of making yourself concentrated
on the actual topic for a long time and drawing
and you're sitting on the computer
because I draw these images in Photoshop
and then all of a sudden you come up
with a great idea that is connected
to the scene in some way.
- Do you like the place?
A little stuffy.
- Little stuffy, yeah.
[both chuckle]
- What?
I dunno, you looked like you were thinking there.
- Oh no, no.
Cool.
- So here, the music stops and it's supposed to be
like music that you hear from the restaurant
but we worked quite much with the timing of it.
But it goes quite often from like a little melancholic
to easy and flying like a little butterfly.
And if you listen now when Carl is deciding to
okay, I'm going to bring up this topic.
You can hear in the music
[classical music playing]
- What?
[music fades out]
- I dunno, you looked like you were thinking there.
- Oh no, no.
Cool.
- This scene when we were shooting it, we actually
had three days of shooting and I like to spend a lot
of time on set together with actors, even if we have
a script that is kind of precise.
And what I ask them to do is
that if they feel there's something
in the script that they don't believe in saying
and then they have to tell me. They have to stop me
and they have to say, I don't believe in these lines.
And then
as a director it's my task to try to change the setups
so it becomes possible for them to say these lines.
And when I'm shooting, I do a lot
of takes on all the different camera setups.
So I think we maybe did around 20 takes
on Charlbi's position.
From take one
and then we go in further and further trying to
sculpt to the scene, making it more precise.
And in the end what I do is
that I tell tell the actors, "Now we have five takes left."
and then I do a countdown 5, 4, 3.
And it's a way
of trying to create a very intense moment where it is almost
like a football game that we are playing together
and we have to win this game together now.
The last take, then I take the whole crew to stand
behind the camera and I have a gong.
And I hit that gong, you know like
okay everybody finish like last take
and I hit the gong, boom.
And when the sound is completely silent
then you get one of the actors
to start the scene with their line.
- I dunno, you looked like you were thinking there.
- Oh no, no.
Cool.
- Come on, I can tell there's something wrong.
Just talk to me.
What is it?
- When I was stepping over
and doing an English language film
I think it was important
for the actors to take quite big responsibility
of how they put the words sometimes.
So when I had wrote the script
I talked to them about the script.
They were allowed to change some lines.
Some lines I wanted them to know, we have to keep it
in that way even if it's not correct English.
But other lines they were allowed
to give me a suggestion.
Yeah, it was a little bit of a challenge
to me to try to get the small nuances in the language.
- Come on, I can tell there's something wrong.
Just talk to me.
What is it?
- No, it's just
when you say
when you say thank you, honey, like that.
I mean, you don't really give me an option but to pay.
- I like also when you see
that the actors dare to look
at the other actor for a long time.
And it can be quite hard, like socially
to like lock the eyes of another person for that long time.
But that is something that I try to encourage them
doing when we are shooting the scenes.
We worked for quite a long time to find Yaya.
Yaya is inspired of a friend of my wife that is a model.
So it was a hard character to play
because it would have to be someone
that's very, very self confident at one point.
And then when the shift in the power hierarchy happens
have to be able to play low status.
And I really didn't find someone that I thought
fitted the role perfectly.
But then my wife gave a suggestion to me
she works in the fashion industry
about an actress and a model
that came from South Africa, Charlbi Dean.
So I think it was maybe two or three months
before the shooting started actually
that Charlbi flew to Gothenburg, where I live.
And we had an improvisation in the office
and I asked her, okay, in which way can you make it as hard
for me as possible to actually deal with this situation?
And Charlbi was such a sweet person
all the situations around the improvisation
but as soon as you said
action
she could go and play high status in such a skillful way.
And it was kind of easy to decide
on her to get the part after that improvisation.
- It was just an observation
because it's something I've noticed.
[both chuckle]
- Oh, we could split the bill if you like.
- No, no, no.
- I can whip out a calculator.
We can-
- No, no.
Okay. You don't need to.
- How many glasses of wine did you have?
- Oh sure, sure.
- You had like three more, right?
- Okay. That's not what I mean, That's not what I mean.
- Yeah.
I think it all evens out, you know?
- You go on a rollercoaster ride
a very emotional one where you sometimes almost
manage to get friends again
but then something happens and then you're super far apart.
It is interesting with these fights that you have
early in the relationship because the consequence can be
that you're not going to be together anymore.
- Don't you remember last night?
You said you were gonna
you said you were gonna pay for food today.
At the end of the meal you said
Thanks, tomorrow I'll get it. I'll get it.
- Sure. But then you picked up the bill
and I thought you wanted to pay.
So I said thank you, honey.
- One of the reasons that I picked
Harris Dickinson to play this scene
was because this scene was the scene
that I used when I was casting.
And what was great with Harris, he was
he had such a strong expression of feeling cornered
and you can see in his face
how he's dealing with the dilemma.
- Sure. But then you picked up the bill
and I thought you wanted to pay.
So I said thank you, honey.
- Okay. But it was there for such a long time.
I mean
- I didn't see it.
- You didn't see it?
- I...
No, I didn't.
I didn't see it or I didn't notice it.
We were just having a nice dinner.
- The title "Triangle of Sadness"
it comes from this wrinkle that I have
that you get from making feature films.
Definitely.
- I can try to
like it's this.
And in Swedish it's called
trouble
wrinkle.
- It's basically a term when it comes to beauty surgery.
And it comes from a friend of mine that was sitting
and having a dinner together with
a beauty surgeon
that all of a sudden says
oh, I can see you have a deep triangle of sadness
but no worries.
We'll fix that with Botox.
- You didn't see the bill when it got put on the table?
- No, I didn't, Carl.
- In the three last films that I have done
Force Majeure, The Square and Triangle of Sadness
you can almost consider it a little bit
of a tri-ology where I'm focusing on
being a man in contemporary times.
And when the man, and expectations of the man, is ending up
the dilemma where we want to behave in a different way.