By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3 cats
Director: Ruben Östlund
Starring: Claes Bang | Dominic West | Elizabeth Moss | Terry Notary
Country: denmark, france, germany, sweden
Year: 2017
Running time: 142
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4995790/reference
Chris says: “The title refers to a highly-touted conceptual piece on display at a Stockholm Art Museum, but as we know, a square is not always just an object. Could it actually refer to a person, like curator Christian (Claes Bang in a bravura performance)? Or a state of being, as in how Christian increasingly finds himself ‘boxed in’ (so to speak), constricted by social mores, political correctness and the mere notions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ taste? Knowing what director Ruben Östlund pulled off with his previous feature, the hilarious, wholly original FORCE MAJEURE , it could be any or none of these things. Although this curious Cannes prizewinner made me laugh out loud more than any film I’ve seen since maybe peak Christopher Guest (particularly in scenes between Bang and Elizabeth Moss as an American journalist), I left it unmoved. THE SQUARE stuffs way too much content in an already bloated two-and-a-half-hour frame, and while it’s rarely boring, it sorely lacks focus. 3 cats“