Couple Carl and Yaya (Harris Dickinson and Charlbi Dean) are fashion models and influencers whose romantic relationship is increasingly soured by money. Offered free places on a luxury cruise, they find themselves sharing a superyacht with a Russian oligarch and some genteel arms dealers, while a deeply cynical Marxist alcoholic captains an increasingly chaotic ship. What begins as a great upstairs/downstairs set-up quickly turns entirely upside-down.

After taking on the art world in The Square, Östlund turns to his attentions to high fashion and the uber-rich, channelling a deep vein of acerbic black comedy. (In one of the film’s best set pieces, Woody Harrelson’s skipper drunkenly argues class and economic theory with a soused oligarch.)

The filmmaker shifts audaciously from bone-dry satire to gross-out maximalist farce over the course of two hours. And with uncompromising clarity, he dissects our dependence on each other, while also examining the dynamics of power and privilege through the prism of beauty, wealth, class and knowledge. It’s a twisted tour-de-force which asserts that power corrupts. Absolutely.

This film contains flashing images which may affect viewers who are susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy.