Take note, fans of A Simple Plan, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Unfaithful and (just perhaps) fellow Down Under import Lantana. A twist-filled Australian drama centering on an adulterous couple whose scheming leads to arson, blackmail and multiple deaths, The Square evokes tangential memories of the classic board game Candyland’s Molasses Swamp, because every step of attempted extrication its protagonist takes only seems to plunge him further into trouble.



Middle-aged construction supervisor Raymond (David Roberts, above) becomes entangled in an affair with a beautiful but troubled neighbor, Carla (Claire van der Boom), whose mulleted husband Smithy (Anthony Hayes) is a menacing figure up to no good. When Carla comes across a mysterious stash of cash hidden by Smithy, she proposes to Ray that they go all Steve Miller Band, and take the money and run. Though reticent at first, Ray hires criminal drifter Billy (co-writer Joel Edgerton) to cover their tracks with an arson scheme, which goes tragically wrong and accidentally fells Carla’s mother-in-law. The couple is understandably freaked… and that’s before the first blackmail note arrives. Someone knows of their illicit love affair, it seems, and as Ray tries to simultaneously get to the bottom of the extortion, finish paying off Billy and execute an on-the-fly cover-up, things only get worse for the lovers.

Director Nash Edgerton works in a sort of plain-faced, stylistically muted fashion, and doesn’t really, until the end, try to artificially goose the dramatic stakes. The Square, perhaps much to its credit, doesn’t waste time trying to get into the details of either party’s domestic unhappiness. Action instead drives the plot, which mostly works since the acting is solid across the board. There can be a certain pleasure to the mere tightening of screws, and that’s chiefly where The Square gets its kicks; weather, happenstance and bystanders’ nosiness all seem to conspire against our lovers. The movie is seeded, too, with sometimes amusing details that raise tension in peripheral, atypical ways (having watched their owners go at it, Ray and Carla’s dogs form a bond), even though many of them never conventionally pay off. It’s a case for fidelity, if only because the alternative seems so downright exhausting. (Apparition, R, 102 minutes)