10 Flawed Elements In Otherwise Flawless Films

Ruben Ostlund is a dab hand at social satire, and his double Palme d'Or wins for The Square and Triangle of Sadness prove that contemporary audiences like what he's saying.

And yet, while Triangle of Sadness manages for the most part to balance the serious and comedic elements of a luxury yacht journey gone awry, a (presumed) desert island scene in which tech billionaire Jorma beats a donkey to death is an unusual low point. This scene highlights the artifice of the movie with some pretty iffy practical effects and a bit of a tone shift, both of which pull us out of an otherwise impeccable two and a half hours - and right at the end too!

But it is not all Ostlund's fault. His original idea was to kill the donkey with a single blow, in a tragic but necessary moment, and his set designer suggested it would take more to do the job. From there, the scene grew legs and turned farcical, like something from a Farrelly brothers movie. No matter what, it wasn't the right thing to introduce so late, with so little work done to legitimise the scene as anything but a gross-out sight gag. The Banshees of Inisherin earns its donkey death, Triangle of Sadness does not.