Dolly de Leon

COMMENTARY

“But for now, the single mother of four is back home, back once again into an entertainment scene where once she too was ‘invisible,’ just like OFW Abigail in the movie’s second act.

Hopefully, the line becomes as iconic as Marlon Brando's "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse" in "The Godfather."

Ruefully uttered by Abigail, the key character of the third act of Swedish director Ruben Ostlund's Palme d'Or-winning "Triangle of Sadness," the line was deftly delivered in all its seething crowd-cheering glory by breakout star Dolly de Leon.

Ms. De Leon herself says the line "is very powerful. That is my favorite event in the whole film. Everyone tells me (audiences) are cheering for those lines, for Abigail."

Not only audiences. Critics agree to the line divvies up the true intent of the Marxist Ostlund's black comedy, despite what one critic described as "an obvious, too-symmetrical parable, with the weak and indigent coming to haunt those who have done everything in their power to oppress and then repress them."

The movie opens with the fashion industry's pretense paths to prostituted fame and fortune, notably the opening sequence where male models smile or frown depending on the clothing brand they wear. Sorrow for expensive clothing, joy for cheap ones.

The furrowed area above the models' brows, the "triangle of sadness," is where the film's title is taken.

It then sequences to wealthy spoiled idiots during a superyacht luxury cruise that cascades into hilarious but lurid vomiting and shitting extravaganza when a storm hits, and then pirates invade and sink this floating microcosm of capitalism's one percent.

By the time it moves on to the self-preservation sequences on a deserted island, social roles are dramatically reversed.

In this bare-survival anti-capitalist joke — where a Rolex is suddenly worthless against packets of chips or toilet manager Abigail's practical subsistence skills like catching octopuses or starting a fire — Ms. De Leon takes her scene-stealing turn.

Her riveting arms-akimbo "despot" turn earned raves and recently, recognition from Hollywood awards bodies.

Earlier, she won best supporting actress in the 2022 Los Angeles Films Critics Association Awards. Extraordinary for a Hollywood newcomer who shaded "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever's" Angela Bassett.

Hollywood's bible Variety considers Ms. De Leon an "incredible Asian actor" and predicts her career is on the rise, boosted even to a possible Oscar nomination.

How did a 53-year-old actress who needed convincing to audition for an award-winning movie get this far?

After toiling away auditioning for countless local commercials, she told interviewers she felt frustrated about her career.

"I just thought, 'No one ever chooses me, so I'll just go and have fun with it,'" she recalled after getting Ostlund's nod for the Abigail role in 2018.

While waiting for filming to start in 2020 in Greece, she devised Abigail's backstory by jotting notes in a loose-leaf journal about people "who are very, very different from me, and especially characters who make a very difficult choice."

Diligently exploring her character prepared her for achieving a "deft comedy, visceral anger and potent sensuality" performance of her breakout role.

Commenting on her breakout, she told an interviewer she feels everything is still surreal about her being in Hollywood.

"It's wild, and I'm going to work here in March. I'm in talks already with some people, you know, playing the stepmom of Jason Schwartzman, an evil stepmom," she says.

But for now, the single mother of four is back home, back once again into an entertainment scene where once she too was "invisible," just like OFW Abigail in the movie's second act.

She indubitably now commands star power. And she intends to make use of her clout by seeking worthwhile acting challenges in a local movie industry dominated by hollow auteurs.

Leaving us the question: Can a mediocre local movie scene come up to Dolly de Leon's outsized talent?