This Thursday, September 8, a few days before its closing, the 48th American Film Festival of Deauville welcomed Ruben Östlund and his anti-capitalist rant “Without Filter”. A comedy as funny as it is disgusting and random, whose bet – successful – is above all to leave no one indifferent.
The Palme d’or 2022 presented in Deauville
Since 2020, the Deauville Festival has been offering a Cannes “residence”. Indeed, that year, the prestigious Cannes Film Festival could not be held due to the Covid pandemic. As a good neighbour, the Norman festival had therefore opened its program to a few titles from the Cannes selection. Two years later, everyone finding his account, this invitation has become permanent. And this is how, among others, Without filterPalme d’or 2022, was shown to the public in Deauville, presented by Thierry Frémaux and its director Ruben Östlund.
A presentation tinged with emotion since, on August 29, 2022, the main actress of Without filter Charlbi Dean died suddenly at the age of 32. Its director, visibly touched, thus paid tribute to him, before the lights went out for the start of his film, his second consecutive Palme d’or after The Square in 2017.
Beauty, stains and class struggle
Unfiltered opens with a brilliant sequence, a cast of male models with staging and scathing dialogues. All of Ruben Östlund’s cinema is there: a dazzling formal stylization that supports cynical and ironic writing. In this casting, we discover Carl (Harris Dickinson). A young Swedish model of great beauty and basically not a bad guy. He is in a relationship with Yaya (Charlbi Dean). She is also a model, influencer and much less naive than Carl. Together, they live their lives and grow their Instagram accounts. Of the happy couple “next gen”, with all that this may imply of false wealth and precariousness in the medium term.
Invited aboard a yacht for a luxurious cruise, they will meet a heterogeneous fauna of the ultra-rich, served by a caring crew. But this seemingly idyllic cruise will turn into a nightmareduring the traditional dinner of the captain – brilliant Woody Harrelson as a crazy and alcoholic Marxist -, dinner which takes place during a storm which will leave a severe seasickness on almost all the passengers.
Ruben Östlund has made provocation his trademark. He seems to have a horror of “good taste” and political correctness, and therefore has a field day in a sandpit that he occupies alone since no other filmmaker sets foot there. Logical, because rather than a sandbox, it would be more accurate to mention a shit bin. Indeed, most of the second part of Without filter is an explosion of vomit, a flood of diarrhea where droppings, gourmet dishes, intestinal bile and overpriced alcohols mingle. Left to its own fate, the yacht will eventually sink.
An obscene fable and criticism of ultra-wealth
Some laugh, others look away. Sighs and onomatopoeias of disgust rub shoulders with bursts of laughter. Obviously, the approach is crude, vulgar, but it makes sense. Ruben Östlund wants to question everyone’s relationship to defilement, soiling – a social marker par excellence. Like, for example, Bong Joon-ho also did it in his awesome Parasite.
Only the Swedish director does it with less finesse. Without, for example, having a plot other than that of wondering what the passengers of this yacht will become. And that, given that they’re basically presented as capitalist scrapings without empathywe do not care a bit.
The third part develops his class struggle in a survival entertainingt but not as good as the first two parts. Lasting 2h22, Without filter is very long, and we feel that the filmmaker likes to stretch his sequences to the limit of the sustainable. However, we notice an exquisite mastery of the staging. The photography and art direction are lovely, and the characterization of the characters crystal clear.
After The Square, Ruben Östlund thus shows that he has mastered the “festival blockbuster” genre to perfection. Surprising, amusing, necessarily new and unique, Without filter deserves to be distinguished. But the Palme d’or may seem excessive for a film that, yes, says something, but really not as well as it thinks it does.
Without filter hits theaters on September 28, 2022and we will go into more detail about this film like no other on this occasion.
