It's about things (landscape paintings or bags or people or an ape or social issues) looked at outside of their usual contextual frames, which might explain a handful of the more bewildering scenes lacking context or consequence (like an apartment ape, a disappearing sexual conquest, and a dramatic arthouse dinner that occurs suddenly and spontaneously and ends without follow-up) but whether bewildering or hilarious, terrifying, shocking or absurd, The Square is always interesting and raises food for thought about issues both on a personal and international front: the refugee crisis, the widening divide between the haves and have-nots, the tendency for individuals to lower their gazes and bow their heads to shirk responsibility, and insane codes of behaviour dictated by arbitrary lines on the ground (wild thrashing about in a nightclub or on a mattress or on a stage set out for cheerleading acrobatics)...or it could all just be a very longwinded reiteration/justification of a 2014 art project by director Ruben Östlund and producer Kalle Boman.
★★★★☆
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