Charlbi Dean and Harris Dickinson in Triangle of Sadness (Fredrik Wenzel/Plattform Produktion/Neon)

Five years after writer/director Ruben Östlund won the Palme d’Or at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival for The Square, he triumphed again with his latest darkly satiric romp, which screened this week at the New York Film Festival. Along with Decision to Leave and R.M.N., Triangle of Sadness was among the uniformly stronger titles in the competition this year. In some ways, the honor serves as a career achievement award, though Östlund has made six feature films since 2004. Entertainingly cynical, his new movie recaps many of the themes that he has previously toyed with while spinning an adventure yarn—it’s something old, something new. It has the bemused and blunt tone of The Square, but also a more defined story line, leaner and meaner, sometimes to the point of cruelty. The Square feels diffused by comparison.

Once again, Östlund bluntly skewers White privilege, income inequality, and the muddled messaging between heterosexual couples, which was the foundation for the slow-burn and tit-for-tat marital disintegration in 2014’s Force Majeure. He continues to beat down on this theme while still tossing in other targets, but from a specific angle: the humiliation and diminution of a millennial male.

The screenplay takes the form of a triptych. Each chapter flows into the next, yet each segment could stand alone on its own. The briefest section introduces Carl (Harris Dickinson of Beach Rats), a male model at a casting call with other shirtless young men. In humiliation number one, a Swedish TV interviewer mockingly ask the young men if they are comfortable making one-third of what their female counterparts make (the wage discrepancy will rear its head again) or having gay men lust after them. And standing before the casting directors, Carl is asked to somehow smooth his forehead, “to relax your triangle of sadness.” Carl is like a chiseled Rodney Dangerfield. Though admired for his looks, he gets no respect.

Östlund has an ear for loading the most innocuous line of dialogue (“Thank you, honey”) with meaning and then credibly escalating the tension in seconds. While dining with his girlfriend, supermodel and influencer Yaya (Charlbi Dean), at a posh, stuffy restaurant, Carl calls Yaya’s bluff when he notices that she hasn’t picked up the check though she had earlier promised she would pay. According to Carl, the squabble’s not about money, it’s just he doesn’t want to “slip into stereotypical gender roles” in which he’s always expected to pay. Well, later on, he gets his wish and more than he bargained for. During the course of the overarching plotline, he will have to swallow whatever pride he has left.

The midsection takes Yaya and Carl on an all-paid ultra-luxury cruise: she promotes the voyage on Instagram with sunbathing selfies. On the top deck, a smiling-on-the-outside-screaming-on-the-inside chief steward, Paula (Vicki Berlin), orders the White serving staff to fulfill their privileged passengers’ every need—the payoff might be a hefty tip. At the bottom of this nautical pecking order are the maintenance, kitchen, and house cleaning crew, all of whom are people of color. Meanwhile, the guests, White and mostly of middle- to retirement age, lounge about, usually with a drink in hand, including the self-described king of shit, Dimitri (Zlatko Buric), a Russian who made his fortune from fertilizer.

Östlund does not have a light touch. When the vessel hits turbulent seas, the passengers are tossed around like rag dolls, particularly Vera (Sunnyi Melles), Dimitri’s wife, who takes a beating as she vomits on her bathroom floor.  In this sequence of shot after shot of passengers spewing out their seafood dinners, there are enough projectile fluids to outgross the dinner scene from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. Two to three minutes—at a minimum—could easily have been trimmed. However convincing the semi-disaster movie section is visually, it becomes self-indulgent. (After the final credits roll, it would be fair to say that the women take the most physical abuse here.)

As the yacht rolls and pitches, Dimitri and the captain, Thomas (Woody Harrelson), play a drinking game and debate free market capitalism versus old school Marxism over the ship’s P.A. system. Their verbal volleys would be suitable for a high school debate team—both men love to hear themselves blabber on. However, the film scores a point. By having Dmitri and Thomas blotto and oblivious to the danger onboard, the director makes his most trenchant point: No one is really in charge of the helm, and if so, it is in name only. A Noam Chomsky devotee, Thomas defines what it is to fail up as the most entitled person aboard this $250 million vessel. He only leaves his cabin for the captain’s dinner. Otherwise, he stays locked behind the door getting hammered on the company’s dime. While everyone else is served multi-course haute cuisine, he gets exactly what he wants, burger and fries.

Although entertaining, many of the digs at the wealthy guests are easy potshots, such as Dimitri’s wife proclaiming, while being served champagne and wading in a hot tub, that “Everyone is equal” (a sentiment mentioned more than once). Or, the genteel elderly English couple who are self-proclaimed promoters of democracy: They manufacture hand grenades and bemoan the ban on land mines.

The script’s originality lies in its treatment of Carl and what happens to him after the storm, when the satire turns into a modern-day take on James M Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton. Now the status quo is up for grabs, and I’ll leave it at that. This is the strongest chapter mainly for focusing on the personal interactions after the long setup of the first two segments. What holds the wild and winding narrative together is the uniformly excellent acting by the entire ensemble. Special mention must go to many of the supporting players, including Iris Berben, as Therese, a German woman who has had a stroke and is only capable of saying three words. Much of the dark humor comes at Therese’s expense.

Dolly de Leon almost steals the film as Abigail, a housekeeper derided by her boss as the yacht’s “toilet manager.” Abigail comes into her own when the circumstances of the passengers and crew have altered the morning after the storm. De Leon gives a master class on how to play someone who knows how to wield power. In an acting class years ago, actor Mercedes Ruehl recalled the advice that actor Zoe Caldwell gave her when Ruehl was portraying Euripides’s Medea: Let everyone come to you. You are the queen. Östlund guides de Leon in a similar direction. Impervious, she doesn’t need to respond or get involved in the demands or meltdowns of others. However, Abigail is not above falling into a trap, proving Lord Acton correct: Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Triangle of Sadness is now screening at the New York Film Festival. It opens in theaters October 7.