‘Pretty Problems’ Review: A Brief, Bruising Climb Up the Social Ladder

variety.com:

Dennis Harvey Film Critic Class divisions that assume macrocosmic significance in Ruben Östlund’s “Triangle of Sadness” remain microcosmically scaled in “Pretty Problems,” another cleverly discomfiting, festival-blessed comedy hitting theaters on Oct.

13. Kestrin Pantera’s third directorial feature, which won the Audience Award at SXSW, also places a less-advantaged young couple in an enclave of the very rich.

Here, however, the upscale slumming is not free, but rather at their expense — a cruel-gamesmanship setup that (as our hero duly notes) suggests the usual horror-movie agenda of “They’re gonna kill us.” That teased direction is not where the film eventually goes, and indeed the script (hatched by several lead performers here) manages to keep upending expectations to the end.

The result is a fresh mix of social satire and relationship dissection with a saving dollop of heart. IFC is opening it on about 30 U.S.