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As the museum's handsome and successful but flawed curator
searches for his stolen mobile phone, the story goes off into
wild directions that even the director admitted he struggled to
make gel.
The film's highlight is a dinner for the museum's well-to-do
patrons where a performance artist leaps from table to table
impersonating an ape -- a bizarre, tense and ultimately violent
scene.
Variety's Owen Gleiberman called "The Square" "a piece of
high-wire sociological suspense" which outstays its welcome:
"the more it goes on the less it hangs together".
The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw said it "brings some gobsmackingly
weird and outrageous spectacle, with moments of pure
showstopping freakiness". Both critics admired writer-director
Ruben Ostlund's ambition, calling the film a piece of
"high-wire" cinema.
Ostlund told reporters: "I was a little bit scared of how to
deal with all these layers.
"I was super, super happy when I was reaching 75 percent of the
editing or something because then I realized: OK, this will
work, it will actually fit together and make a solid film."
The actors said Ostlund was an extremely demanding director,
often shooting the same scene more than 70 times.
Lead actor Claes Bang said he performed one speech 100 times.
"Around take 95 he drags me down to the monitor and he points to
the monitor and he says: 'Now this is gonna stop. I am not going
to have any more of that shitty television acting that you're
doing. Now you pull yourself together and you do it for real!'"
"That was like a kick in the head."
"The Square" is in competition for the Palme d'Or at the
festival which runs until May 28.
(Additional reporting by Sarah Mills; Editing by Alison Williams
and Helen Popper)
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