Review: The Square

Image courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

Ruben Ostlund's "The Square" is an occasionally funny, often frustrating and frequently too obvious satire of the art world that, somehow, won the Palm d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival. The picture is a follow-up to the director's previous Cannes favorite, "Force Majeure," a much funnier and sharper satire of bourgeoise foibles.

There's a fair amount to admire in "The Square," especially the performances by Claes Bang as art director Christian, around whom much of the film's action revolves, and Elisabeth Moss as an American journalist who sleeps with Christian after having interviewed him. But many of the film's targets are too easy and the picture, at times, feels reactionary.

The movie opens with Christian, who runs the operations of a gallery known as the X-Royal Museum, stopping to help a young woman from being attacked by a man on the street, only to find out that the whole scene was a scam and his wallet has been stolen. Meanwhile, people on the street hold up signs and ask passersby for subscriptions to social services, while a few feet away homeless people are sleeping - or maybe dead - with no one paying them any mind.

Meanwhile, Christian and his work cohorts are debuting a new exhibition known as Square, which is a box surrounded by glowing light strips. The exhibit is intended to be a "safe space," combining art and sociological study, and Christian must come up with a way to relay the exhibit's message to the public. Unfortunately for him, he brings in two exaggeratedly obtuse millennials who come up with a ridiculous advertising concept for the Square involving a little girl being blown up - as in detonated - inside it. For some reason, Christian agrees to the concept and soon finds himself in a PR nightmare.

Simultaneously, Christian enlists the help of several work friends to carry out a mission in which he delivers an accusatory letter to every single mailbox in a building after he discovers that the people who stole his wallet are among the tenants. Miraculously, his wallet is returned, however, he is now plagued by a young boy who tells him that his letter caused his parents - who assumed that the boy stole the wallet - to punish him.

Some of these scenes are amusing. One involving Moss's character bringing Christian back to her apartment for sex, which involves a live ape and a tug of war involving a condom, becomes hilariously awkward, especially after she confronts him later at his museum. Other sequences are just flat-out awkward, such as one in which Tourette syndrome is utilized for laughs or another during which Christian agrees to pay for a homeless woman's meal, only to have her suddenly become picky in regards to what she'll eat.

The piece de resistance of the film, if you will, involves a banquet held by the museum, during which a performance artist takes his aggression a bit too far, resulting in the guests attacking him. However, the point of this sequence appears to be just how far the guests at the museum will allow the scene to play out before intervening. Much like the film's aforementioned early scenes in which people pass by the homeless without noticing them, the picture's sociological observations are, well, a little too obvious.

In the 1960s and 1970s, filmmakers such as Luis Bunuel and Pier Paolo Pasolini often created furiously hilarious attacks on bourgeoise attitudes and lifestyles. During the past few decades, director Michael Haneke has made a few such films - for example, "Funny Games," of which I was not a fan, and "Cache," which I thought was terrific - that have covered similar ground. Yorgos Lanthimos' "Dogtooth" was also a highly inventive film exploring such concepts.

But two recent films - Lanthimos' "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" and "The Square" - are films in that vein that give off the vibe of sneering at liberal societies and making easy targets of them. The titular art piece in Ostlund's film appears to satirize the concept of what right wing commentators might call "PC culture." And in both "Sacred Deer" and Ostlund's film, the protagonists are both flawed men who are, perhaps, out of touch with the lives of the less fortunate, but ultimately attempt to do the right thing. And for that, they are castigated.

In the film, much like Eli Roth's "The Green Inferno" - I know, an odd comparison - do gooders are seen as foolish. But none of the films provide better alternatives - other than to take easy potshots. "The Square" is a well made, well acted and occasionally amusing film, but it's not as clever as its makers seem to think it is. It's certainly not a bad movie - and a few sequences are examples of bravura filmmaking - but I'm a little surprised that this picture took Cannes' top prize.