Review of “The Square”
If Australian films have frustrated you recently for their lack of driving narrative and shortage of things actually happening on screen, then The Square will definitely restore your belief that home grown cinema can entertain. It’s a gripping story that slowly and steadily spins out of control, fuelled by mistrust, suspicion and guilt, and is made very good viewing by director Nash Edgerton who’s brother Joel wrote the screenplay with Matthew Dabner.
What starts as a secretive small town affair between Ray (David Roberts) and Carla (Claire van der Boom), gets more complicated when Carla spies her husband “Smithy” (Anthony Hayes) stashing a bag of cash in the laundry of their small home. Seeing a chance to escape her heartless marriage - as well as Smithy’s unsavoury friends - Carla tries to convince Ray to steal the money. But he’s got other problems at the building site he manages, embroiled in kickbacks, untrustworthy contractors, and a miserably tough boss (Bill Hunter). Given this collection of characters, and a wet and stormy Australian Christmas season, the bag of money and the illicit affair are more than enough to kick start a suburban nightmare. 
It’s billed as being film noir-ish, and certainly contains enough parts grim optimism, fatalistic despair and outright paranoia to qualify strongly in the genre. Like many good noir films it will probably be criticised by some for neither leaving us a truly likeable character occupying the moral centre of the story nor exempting anyone or anything from the luckless path of fate. But that’s the murky world of noir crime. For Edgerton, this is a place where it’s easy to see the quick way out, but impossible to imagine all the things that could go wrong.
The performances – particularly from Hayes and Roberts - are real and understated, helped by a superb script that doesn’t linger with any scene longer than the time needed to open up small cracks in human nature. Edgerton’s confident direction – both with action sequences and scenes centering on the edgy relationships between characters - keeps the carefully crafted story rolling along. The camerawork, under the watchful eye of cinematographer Brad Shield, often follows the worried gaze of the key characters as they survey the uncertain space ahead, and cleverly keeps us guessing but always right in the action. It’s a very accomplished and exciting piece of filmmaking.
Rating:
Leave a Reply