Cannes Palme d’Or goes to Ruben Ostlund’s “The Square”
CANNES, France — The Cannes Film Festival awarded its coveted Palme d’Or award to Ruben Ostlund’s Swedish comedy “The Square” on Sunday, while Sofia Coppola became only the second woman to win the best director award.
“Oh my god! OK,” the Swedish filmmaker exclaimed after he bounded onto the stage to collect the prestigious Palme, in a rare and somewhat surprising win for a comedy.
In “The Square,” Claes Bang plays a museum director whose manicured life begins to unravel after a series of events that upset his, and the museum’s, calm equilibrium. The movie’s title comes from an art installation that Bang’s character is prepping, which invites anyone who enters a small square to be kind and generous.
The film’s satire and exploration of moral dilemmas culminated in one of the festival’s most eye-catching scenes. A muscled, grunting man pretending to be a gorilla upsets a black-tie dinner for the museum, sniffing attendees and dragging a woman by the hair.