Well Deserved Praise

Thanks for the memories!

People are voting emotionally.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

If you find yourself more gripped by The Square than you first thought you might be, then that is because it gets the crucial things right before it unleashes its spectacular tale of nihilist causality designed to amuse; entertain and gut-wrench in equal measure. The Square isn't an original film. Its central idea is along the lines of blackmail; doubles crosses and people in extra martial affairs trying to do one over the feminine participant's partner. However, it remembers to make us care about those involved to make it engaging; remembers to have us give a damn about what might happen to the folk it spends a good deal of time setting up before these various parties and people vie with one another over a large amount of money. The premise is, of course, enough to illicit groans from some people – every genre film ever made has the ability to do such a thing, but Nash Edgerton's film does what's crucial and nails that opening chapter in regards to its character relation dynamics for us to tune in and come to enjoy it to the degree we're supposed to. In spite of this potential to be unoriginal, I'll be damned if the day comes along whereby I don't enjoy a well-made thriller about a bag of cash and some people with the potential to be quite rotten scurrying around trying to end up with it. Veterans of another Australian relationships drama entitled "Lantana" will spy the inflection during The Square's opening sequence, a track down from a busy highway across a bridge constructed over a large river moves to encompass the unpleasant noises insects and bugs in the undergrowth produce before we focus on a truck housing two people making love. That idea of unpleasant things out of sight is here again – once more, not an original feat but one which infers a certain sense of this being an illegal rendez-vous out of the film's inferring they're 'hiding' from the mainstream flow. Completing the additional foul swoop, and alluding to a darker tone of comedy often dropped in amidst the grizzly-ness of what's beneath inner-suburban Australia, Edgerton will place two yapping mutts in a neighbouring vehicle at this small rest stop mirthfully reminding us that these two people are, indeed, 'dogging'.The two are Ray (Roberts) and Carla (van der Boom), Ray a man with a wife and Carla a woman with a husband. Ray works on a construction site charged with building a motel, the sort of location you might expect Ray and Carla to be sneaking off to in order to perpetuate their illicit romance. In spite of everything, Ray strikes us as a nice guy; someone who, we sense, deserves more in life than what he's got when we watch him verbally struck down at work by a foreman's retort to a pretty decent idea Ray has on the job at hand. Alas, he cannot seem to get a break in this regard. Set in a small Australian town divided by a river, each of their spouses are unaware of a romance which escalates into the penchant for theft and elope when, in true 50's Hollywood noir fashion, a large quantity of money comes Carla's way and Ray is swayed into going with a plan of hers. Before you roll your eyes enough to do yourself some serious damage, hear that he does and that we don't mind that he does because Edgerton grinds some serious drama out of a familiar idea featuring people we enjoy following. We wonder just how it is Carla picks her men; her incumbent partner is certainly a lot rougher than Ray and we're amused at how Carla's man's bulldog-inflected pet dog clashes with that of Ray's poodle. Much more affecting is how we observe Ray dine in front of a television with his wife, anonymously and blandly in what is a state of matrimony that's seen better days. It is Carla's husband Greg (Hayes) who obtains the cash in the first place, further still provoking Carla to get Ray to help take it from him before anyone can spot anything. The charm is in the film's resisting to go for a straight up good guys and villains-type scenario, with Greg as the bad guy and the central two as the lovers looking to go on the run. We don't brush these characters off as archetypes; indeed, we sense these people are human and might exist; we sense that if Carla was to ever go for an older man, she'd chose Ray's tall, wiry and softly spoken character. Additionally, we don't necessarily dislike Greg. If none of the above still doesn't convince you, take an amusing scene in a kitchen during a BBQ someone is hosting: Ray treads towards the fridge for a beer – "Don't you DARE pull out a can of Fosters" we scream at ourselves as the thing jolts open. The hand goes in, it comes back out again and that unmistakable blue inflection that makes up a can of Foster's is nowhere to be seen…. We sigh in relief and ease our way back into the scene again before the film proper – How nice to watch a thematic or an arc that's somewhat familiar where the people depicted within are a little more than just clichés.

The action in The Square takes place in a small Australian town, a town so small that everyone knows everyone at least casually, and when a party is arranged most of the residents are invited.Two of these residents are middle aged construction foreman Ray (David Roberts) and a hairdresser in her early 20s named Carla (Claire van der Boom – an awesome stripper name if there ever was one!). Ray and Carla are married… but not to each other.Things start going wrong early, but on a smaller scale. Ray and Carla intend to leave their respective spouses and skip town, but first they need cash. To come up with the cash they each come up with a plan, Ray cuts a side deal with a shonky contractor, and Carla's plan involves theft and just a pinch of arson."It's not like anyone will get hurt", she reasons. How wrong she is.The Square is as dark as films come, everyone in the film is varying degrees of shonky otherwise they don't get any lines. No room for the honest here Mate. But this is a decidedly non-Hollywood noir, the protagonists aren't gangsters or hit men or criminal geniuses, they are tow-truck drivers, hairdressers and local slobs.As the ever growing bodycount envelops both the innocent and the not so… more and more are intertwined in an ever more complex story that should have begun and ended with Ray and Carla skipping town. Alas once the paranoia, mistrust and guilt leads to cover up, murder and betrayal no-one in The Square is destined for a happy ending.As a viewer I kept thinking "Now how are you gonna get out of this?" and "Don't do that you dickhead", but the actions of those involved never stray into cartoon or the illogical – at least to them. It might take a leap of faith to pretend all the events in the film happen over a short time frame, but it isn't beyond the stretch of the imagination to think most of this stuff could happen.I just hope it never happens near me.Final Rating – 6 / 10. An effective and intricately drawn drama that will keep you guessing and involved until the very end, even once you realise there cannot possibly be a happy outcome.

In a tradition that began with the French back in 1938, Nash and Joel Edgerton have written, produced, directed and edited a truly gritty film noir – replete with the requisite femme fatale – within a typical Australian setting, in around the outer suburbs of Sydney. While the story is fiction, there is nothing fake about the mise-en-scene, the culture of the Australian male, the everyday corruption in personal and business life and so on...Because it's all so ordinary. That's what makes it so interesting, evoking a comparison with the more famous Cohen brothers who have delighted us with Blood Simple (1984), Fargo (1996), No Country for Old Men (2007) and others – all of which showed us how ordinary, decent, criminal people get involved in nefarious activities which, ultimately, resulted in mayhem, chaos and death, for some.So, in a typical suburban setting, a couple (both married) are having a torrid affair, with the woman urging her lover to run away with her. When she finds a bag of money in the upper crawl space of her house, hidden by her husband, she steals it and convinces her lover to burn the house down, thus covering the loss of the money. Or, so they think...As always, though, the unexpected arrives: when the house burns, so also an old woman who was at the wrong place at the wrong time. And, from there on, the lives of those involved in the dirty business spiral completely out of control as, inevitably, one thing leads to another and the bodies begin to pile up. But, that's not all.Meshing with the lover's attempts to scarper with the money is a twisted sub-plot and mystery that totally muddy the main story and will leave most – maybe all – viewers uncertain about the expected outcome to the whole story. Oh, you intuitively know that, in film noir, there'll be dramatic irony; in this one, however, everybody does get what they deserve, but for the wrong reasons. Maybe that's what happens in real life, more often than not? As the lovers, David Roberts (as Raymond) and Claire van der Bloom (as Carla) are near perfect: he as the reluctant, uncertain cuckold, she as the relentless pragmatist doing whatever it takes. Against them, there is Anthony Hayes (as Greg) and Joel Edgerton (as Billy) but these two men know nothing of the other until the final shootout – a meeting to be savored for its terrific pacing, editing and irony. In the background, murkily adding to the mix, there is the always-riveting Bill Hunter (as the construction boss, Gil), Paul Caesar (as the very surprising Sgt. Miles), Kieran Darcy-Smith (as Barney) and Brendan Donoghue (as Leonard).This is a mature and superbly produced film by two brothers who, in my opinion, will just get better and better. Foreign viewers might have some difficulty with strong Aussie accents from some characters – but no worse than some accents from some other countries. Do persevere with The Square, however: you won't be disappointed.My only real quibble is that a quote in the advertising material compares this one to Body Heat (1981). That's a stretch, I think: the two stories are quite different in substance, style and outcome. So, if you've seen that great film noir from Lawrence Kasdan, don't be mislead going in to see The Square.As to the actual square, well, there's no doubt that Raymond is a pretty dull sort of bloke who fumbles and bumbles his way into trouble fairly easily. But, he's also in construction and he's trying to get a large square of concrete poured to hide one of his biggest mistakes - buried there - before somebody finds out (I'm reminded of William H. Macy's bumbling Jerry in Fargo). Unhappily for Raymond, somebody does find out...Highly recommended.

When the dog got killed I laughed, soft-hearted dog lover that I am, because the Dog was standing in for the Square. (And what a dog! Able to race through neighborhoods, swim a river and then run through yet another neighborhood to find his cutie!) Come to think of it, the two owners of the dogs, in the opening sequence, while hooking up, had both dogs in the same car. Maybe the director's cut will open on the two dogs having a go of it and then pan over to Ray and Carla getting it on. But seriously..... By not showing a compelling reason, other than sex, in even one scene, I had increasing difficulty over Ray's willingness to dump everything for the sake of his sex mate. And jumping to the end of the movie, after a badly staged scene of Carla getting killed.....and the camera-on-a-crane showing a disconsolate and bloody Ray walking down the street away from the carnage, one is supposed to say 'tsk-tsk' poor guy. But I didn't have any sympathy for either Carla or Ray at that point. How do you sympathize with characters who have little character and who you don't like?Other more technical annoyances were a couple of impenetrable accents and also poor casting choices which made it confusing to know who was who.Why did Lenny steal the generator? And what did he have on Ray?It also wasn't enough to kill, in a road accident, the suspicious foreman but the writers had to also place an infant in the vehicle.After a break in, wouldn't the obvious thing to happen, with all the materials lying around, be the hiring of a security guard?And pray tell how did the boss-of-bosses and the law know about the blackmailing? More important, how were they going to resolve the serious breach of the law that they were involved in?There really were more silly things gathering along the way but you get the idea.....