It hits — and it misses
Cannes’ top winner The Square cluttered, but works well as social satire writ large
Sweden’s Ruben Östlund made a splash in 2014 with Force Majeure, which took a simple idea and ran with it — right off the edge of a cliff, as it were. When an avalanche seemed about to strike the ski resort where a couple and their two kids were vacationing, the husband’s involuntary act of cowardice (or self-preservation?) haunted the family for the rest of the film.
Östlund’s newest, which won the top prize at Cannes this year, paints its social satire on a bigger canvas — again, somewhat literally. Christian (Claes Bang), chief curator at a fictional art gallery in Stockholm, has his wallet and phone stolen during a clever scam in a public square, and becomes obsessed with their return.
So he and underling Michael (Christopher Laessø) find the phone’s signal and distribute threatening letters to the apartment block where it’s at.
But it turns out that sending intimidating notes to an entire building will tick some people off, even if you use Comic Sans
font. Christian must now deal with the repercussions of his actions, which he sees as merely reactions to the initial theft.
If this film followed the style of Force Majeure, that would be it. Instead, Östlund piles on a variety of additional plot complications, some of which work better than others. There’s the strangely intense journalist Anne (Elisabeth Moss) who has a onenight stand with Christian and then demands further intimacy. There’s the question of what to do about beggars, especially those unaware of the “can’t-be-choosers” rule. And should a guy whose Tourette’s is acting up at an art talk excuse himself or soldier on?
The film’s centrepiece, displayed prominently on its posters, features a banquet for well-heeled gallery patrons in which a performance artist (movement coach Terry Notary, giving it his all) wanders in like an 800-pound gorilla and starts terrorizing the diners. It takes up just 11 of The Square’s 142 minutes, but looms large both during and after the show.
Almost lost in the mix is The Square itself, an art installation designed to make passersby think about their rights and obligations as citizens when they are moving through public spaces. Things go awry on that front when a distracted Christian OKs an “edgy” video advertisement for the work without bothering to look at it first.
Between the long running time, a few loose ends, and a random bonobo in Anne’s apartment, The Square doesn’t deliver the kind of concentrated thinking-person’s entertainment as Östlund’s previous film. Or maybe I’m demanding too much. It’s as if someone managed to dramatize a transportation problem and make it laugh-out-loud funny, would it be churlish to then ask: Where are we going?