19th September (Third Friday)

THE SQUARE

Australia | 2008 | 105 mins | Noir/Thriller | Dir: Nash Edgerton
Cast: David Roberts, Claire van der Boom and Joel Edgerton

Lovers, Ray and Carla, plan to burn down her house at Christmas and to run off with her husband’s drug money. Ray has a side scheme going too, taking kickbacks on the love hotel project whose construction he is managing. The suburban Aussie marrieds live across a river from each other, the much older, domesticated Ray in an upper middle-class neighbourhood, Carla on the wrong side of the water. The cheaters will lure their families to the same Christmas picnic celebration, to provide alibis while still being able to sneak off and chat about the arson. Carla’s tow-truck owner hubby, Smithy, is a fearsome tough to cross, so will the philanderers’ holiday gifts come through, or explode in their lying faces?

Between 2008 and 2011, The Square won two awards and received 15 nominations, including, in 2009, for Best Film (Film Critics Circle of Australian Awards and Australian Film Institute and Sydney Film Festival).