The Square
Dir Nash Edgerton, feat Joel Edgerton, Lucy Bell, Claire Van Der Boom (MA15+)
By Ruth Hessey
Nash Edgerton's directorial debut has been eagerly awaited by fans of his brisk, spry short films. A stunt man by trade, he brings a terrific sense of timing to the screen, a degree of street cred, and a sense of humour.
There's no doubt he'll have a fantastic career in Hollywood, directing action films. The Square is more than competently put together.
The Square is your basic meat and potatoes tale of adultery, deception, and revenge, full of mean guys with weird beards, guns, and beer bellies and enough tatts to give it "working class" resonance for nostalgic Anglos.
Carla (Claire Van Der Boom) is having an affair with Ray, a middle class construction supervisor suffering in a loveless marriage. We have to assume it's loveless, because Ray doesn't take any notice of his wife (Lucy Bell) at all. There's a whole film waiting in her loneliness, but the Edgertons are not remotely interested.
Ray's feelings for his mistress verge on the tepid. There is almost no semblance of sexual tension between this pair, and certainly not enough heat to justify a runaway plan.
Nevertheless the plot requires that Carla wants to run away, and to do that she needs money. So she plans
a robbery and a way to destroy the evidence. Not only devoid of feeling, but not very clever either - Carla's plan is bound to come unstuck. Meanwhile Ray is about making one idiotic mistake after the other. And the whole film is about these people?
The Square doesn't make any attempt to explore human nature. It moves its characters across the chessboard with scant regard for their motivations or emotions.
It's a fair enough exercise in genre filmmaking, but we'll have to wait if we want more from an Edgerton film.