I have never attended the Cannes Film Festival. If anyone reading this would like to pick up the tab for the trip, I'd be willing to go, though. Anyway, the films that have won the prestigious Palme d'Or (The Golden Palm) that I have seen, have varied widely in quality, in my opinion.
Some folks say it's more of an award for the connected than an acknowledgement of greatness. I have no idea if that's true, but considering that Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives won in 2010, they are not all winners. However, the scene where the fish has sex with a woman in a lagoon was noteworthy. You read that last sentence correctly.
This year's winner was "The Square", Swedish director Ruben Östlund's latest and while it's far better than the sex with the fish one, it's at best, uneven. Set in Stockholm in a modern art museum, it's a view inside the snobbery and pretentiousness of the art world. Oddly, it is as snobbish and pretentious as the world it's trying to parody; or maybe that's the director's point.
Christian (Claes Bang) is the dashing museum curator who wants desperately to elevate the museum to the head of the class of trendy new art. The centerpiece of his goal is the new installation, titled The Square. It's a small square placed between cobblestones in the museum's courtyard. It is supposed to be a sanctuary where everyone's rights are to be respected. Uh, okay.
The evil media advisors in the museum interfere with the pure artistry of it, as they do with everything. They represent the gauche people who don't understand the purity of art, even if there is really nothing to understand. The entirety of "The Square" is the constant battle between the art and the business of art. What does make it watchable are some scenes that are fun and uncomfortable, with one of them being truly a great scene.
The fun scenes aren't laugh-out-loud funny, but they do make you smile. One example is an absurd exhibit that consists of pieces of gravel piled on the floor in the shape of cones. One of the maintenance crew rides a floor cleaner and knocks over some of the gravel. The attempt to re-align the meaningless gravel to match what they were is absurdly funny.
The one truly great section of the film takes place at a very fancy dinner in a large ballroom. All of the guests are dressed in their best and reeking of class. Hell breaks loose when Oleg (Terry Notary) enters, wearing little, and behaving like a sort of Neanderthal man. All of the best scenes make you squirm a bit, but this one is insanely uncomfortable to watch, because it's unclear if it's performance art or something far more insidious.
It's difficult to sum up this one because it is so disjointed, playing more like a series of SNL skits than as a flowing movie. Not that it's nearly as funny as a top SNL skit, but it did remind me of when some jokes in skits work, while the others fall flat, which can cause a general unease. The difference here is that Östlund is trying to make us uncomfortable, so I suppose he feels he hit it square out of the park. I'm not so sure.
| Movie title | The Square |
|---|---|
| Release year | 2017 |
| MPAA Rating | R |
| Our rating | |
| Summary | Uneven trashing of the modern art world has some great moments, but not quite enough of them. |
