★★★★☆
He took potshots at bourgeois ennui in Force Majeure. He pilloried the art world with his Palme d’Or-winning The Square. Now the Swedish firebrand film-maker Ruben Ostlund is back, with his most ambitious project yet — a movie that shows the dehumanising essence of free-market capitalism, but via one-liners, Woody Harrelson and the kind of gross-out gags that send sensitive Cannes critics fleeing from the auditorium (two in my row).
The nausea-inducing and soon to be much discussed set piece lands halfway through this prodigious yet consistently entertaining fable about the lifestyles of the super-rich.
Harrelson plays Thomas, the alcoholic captain of a mega-yacht, a self-declared, self-loathing Marxist with too many possessions. His ultra-wealthy passengers include a petulant male model, Carl (Harris
