'Triangle of Sadness' Director Breaks Down a Dinner Date Scene

[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.