THE SQUARE

Screen Australia

Reviewed for Movieweb by Harvey Karten

Grade: B+

Directed by: Nash Edgerton

Written By: Joel Edgerton, Matthew Dabner

Cast: David Roberts, Claire van der Bloom, Joel Edgerton, Anthony Hayes

Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 5/26/09

Opens: July 17, 2009

Psychologists and sociologists have been telling us so often that the Christmas season causes depression that we tend to believe this: easy enough if you personally find this true. There’s another minus to Christmas week, the opposite side of depression’s coin: that’s anxiety. In Nash Edgerton’s directorial debut, “The Square” features a fairly large number of people who may celebrate Santa’s season outdoors on a warm evening in suburban Sydney, Australia, but there’s no way they’re going to eat, drink and be merry for long.

“The Square” may remind cinephiles of Sam Raimi’s “A Simple Plan,” in which two brothers and a friend find four million dollars in the cockpit of a plane, a find that they’d wish they had never uncovered. In this Downunder evocation of the quote “Be careful what you wish for,” the plot opens with a bang, so to speak, as Ray (David Roberts) conducts in his car a segment of his long-standing affair with Carla (Claire van der Boom). Carla is married to a small-time, bearish criminal, Greg Smith (Anthony Hayes), who seems oblivious to what’s going on between his wife and the neighbor across the lake. When Carla discovers a bag full of money in her husband’s attic hiding place, she concocts a plan to steal it all, thereby allowing her to run away with Ray, employing Billy (scripter Joel Edgerton), an arsonist, to burn down the house thereby hiding the loss from her husband.

Carla plays Eve to Ray’s Adam this time, but there’s more than one snake in the grass in this working-class/middle-class ‘burb of Australia’s largest city. Quite a few people have secrets, whether they be adulterous relationships, outright criminal actions, blackmail, or kickback schemes. The plot becomes thick and twisty as the men and women run their power plays, coordinating plans with working-class accents that make some dialogue almost as difficult to understand as the Scottish banter in “Trainspotting.”

Joel Edgerton, who co-wrote the story with Matthew Dabner (winning the Best Screenplay award at the 2009 Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards), keeps us on the edges of our seats as first one guy gets the drop on another, then the tables are turned—all the tension ratcheted up by Franc Tetaz’s spooky soundtrack accented by some booming songs. Luke Doolan’s editing takes us to the border of the horror genre particularly when one dude scarce the beejeezus out of another (and us in the audience) and when photographer Brad Shield hones in on a fight between one man with a big spade and another with a pickaxe. The construction site under Ray’s supervision becomes scariest on a dark and stormy night as the soil becomes a pauper’s grave for one unhappy resident.

Two dogs, Muz the boxer played by Harris and Lufer, a poodle played by Chloe, serve as stand-ins for Ray and Carla, a mysterious and unexplainable tragedy occurring to one while the boxer swims in the lake toward his own lover. Special kudos to dog wrangler Peta Clarke for training these two top dogs. “The Square” is a nourish film, much of the action between hot lovers on damp nights. Maybe marital fidelity has something going for it after all.

Unrated. 105 minutes. © 2009 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online