Chicago, see Palme D'Or-winning cringe comedy The Square early and for free
Ruben Östlund’s philanthropic cringe comedy The Square was a surprise winner at the Cannes Film Festival this year, pulling down the coveted Palme D’Or from a packed crowd of festival favorites. Our own A.A. Dowd loved it, writing in his recent review that the film—about a museum curator whose pretensions of philanthropy and charity get smashed back into his face in increasingly absurd ways—is Östlund’s “magnum opus: a two-and-a-half-hour cringe comedy about the foibles of supposed high society, unfolding as a daisy chain of exquisitely awkward episodes.”
The film is currently gearing up for its U.S. release, with an exclusive opening planned for Chicago’s Music Box Theater on November 10. But fans anxious to taste Östlund’s bitterly funny follow-up to 2014's Force Majeure are in luck: We’ve got several pairs of tickets available for an advance screening of The Square ahead of the premiere, and all you’ve got to do to get them is go here and fill in a bit of information.
The screening is scheduled for 7:00 p.m. on November 8, at the AMC River East Theater. You’ll want to get there early, though; these advance screenings always overbook, and you’re probably going to prefer the meticulous awkwardness of Östlund’s film to the more haphazard discomfort of not actually getting a seat to see it.