Keanu Reeves<\/a> is cast as an electrician here. He has appeared in the \u201cBill & Ted\u201d films [as well as \u201cGood Fortune\u201d in 2025]. However, comedy is not the genre with which he is most associated, would you agree?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\tYes, exactly. He has a very deadpan comedic quality to his acting, and it worked out really well. I\u2019m looking forward to seeing how the audience reacts to his performance. He\u2019s introduced in the film beautifully. When it comes to the lady whose husband dies of heart attack, they are asking him: \u2018Excuse me, could you change seats with the widow? She\u2019s in shock. And we have no place to store the body, so you\u2019ll have to sit next to the corpse, you know.\u2019 Playing with the public\u2019s perception of Keanu Reeves in relation to his character in this film was so much fun.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tIn your work, you often talk about terrible, unpleasant things. And then you make it funny.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\tI\u2019m happy it turns out that way. It\u2019s absurd to make dramas about human beings. Come on, we are quite privileged, right? When I look at my own life and the conflicts I\u2019ve been dealing with, they seem quite trivial. Especially considering we\u2019re all going to die.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tI did a retrospective in the U.S. called \u201cIn Case of No Emergency\u201d and that title says something about my films. There\u2019s basically never any physical danger. There will be physical danger in this film, but the characters won\u2019t realize it until the last 15 minutes of their lives. We feel that being human is so painful. It\u2019s interesting to examine our herd mentality and how sensitive we are to socializing. I\u2019ve been interested in that for a long time. From the day we\u2019re born, we start training in socialization. Later, it\u2019s possible to just pull the strings and quickly make things quite painful. Out of all feelings, shame is the one that takes over most brain processes. We can almost feel it physically.<\/p>\n
\n\tDon\u2019t you think that feeling shame can be healthy?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\tTrump would probably appear more sympathetic if we could see that he was ever ashamed.<\/p>\n
\n\tEveryone is expecting to see this film at Cannes. Why wait until 2027 which, as you said, might be the case?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\tIn February, we\u2019ll see how much longer we need. As a director, what would be even more important to me is seeing the dynamics in the cinema when people are watching it. I need to be able to conduct test screenings because there are many sensitive elements here, including a 15-minute sequence. I had a painful experience with \u201cPlay\u201d because I didn\u2019t have time for test screenings beforehand. I\u2019m not going to put myself in that situation again. Also, I want to maximize my films\u2019 potential.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tMany European directors, upon hearing \u201ctest screenings,\u201d would just run for the hills.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\tThey\u2019re completely wrong because the collective experience of being in a cinema changes the pacing of the film. It\u2019s not about asking the audience: \u201cDid you like this, or did you like that?\u201d It\u2019s about sitting with them as a director and feeling the energy in the room.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tI started doing this with \u201cForce Majeure,\u201d \u201cThe Square\u201d and \u201cTriangle of Sadness\u201d because I felt that European cinema had lost its connection with audiences. It was imitating and copying a certain arthouse tradition. But if you look back at the 1960s, \u201970s, or \u201980s, the connection with the audience was much better back then. John Cleese fine-tuned the humor in \u201cA Fish Called Wanda\u201d after 12 different screenings. It\u2019s not just about making things comfortable for them.\u00a0\u00a0But it\u2019s very ignorant to think that you don\u2019t have to carefully consider how the audience will react.<\/p>\n
\n\t(The interview has been edited for clarity and concision.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source variety.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cTriangle of Sadness\u201d director met with\u00a0Variety\u00a0following his explosive presentation of much-anticipated \u201cThe Entertainment System Is Down,\u201d which might be heading to Cannes in 2026. Or in 2027.\u00a0 You don\u2019t care about spoilers, but why did you reveal such crucial plot points at G\u00f6teborg Film Festival? Including the ending? When I think about some of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2257701,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[306645,350313,421806],"class_list":["post-2257700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-keanu-reeves","tag-ruben-ostlund","tag-the-entertainment-system-is-down"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Ruben-Ostlund-on-Keanu-Reeves-in-The-Entertainment-System-Is.webp.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2257700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2257700"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2257700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2257702,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2257700\/revisions\/2257702"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2257701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2257700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2257700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2257700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}