Ruben Östlund on his Cannes-winner The Square and the dark side of the joke

The interview could not really go any worse. It starts off awkwardly, rapidly descends into a stream of platitudes and obfuscation before screeching to a premature halt. Later, interviewer and subject will end up in bed together.

This, fortunately or otherwise, is not the story of my encounter with Swedish film-maker Ruben Östlund, but describes the opening of his latest opus The Square, the serio-comic tale of a smooth-talking Stockholm museum curator called Christian who propagates lofty ideals even while finding himself in a series of morally compromising situations in his personal and professional life. The meeting with the journalist (played by Elisabeth Moss) is just the first. Others that follow involve homeless beggars, indignant immigrants and eventually the press and public at large.

Unlike Christian, Östlund is riding high. Last year in Cannes The Square was awarded the Palme d’Or, the most prestigious prize in world cinema. On accepting it, the director incited the uptight and clearly baffled Cannes crowd to roar with him — an unexpected and jarring moment that played just like a scene from one of his movies.

The House of St Barnabas, where we meet, seems a strangely fitting place to talk about The Square. The non-profit members’ club in London’s Soho operates as a charity for the homeless, and its 18th-century stairwell is dotted with contemporary works that wouldn’t look out of place in Christian’s museum.

Luckily for me, The Square’s opening scene does not reflect Östlund’s own antipathy to being interviewed. “I can enjoy it quite a lot,” he says, but adds that he likes such meetings best when they go wrong. He points me to a YouTube clip of a man who turned up at the BBC to be interviewed for an IT job but was mistaken for a technology journalist and ended up being quizzed on live TV. “They have to keep going,” says Östlund. “And the journalist almost doesn’t notice because she just wants to do a performance for the cameras. So it’s really a metaphor like the Emperor’s New Clothes; the expectation of the roles they’re supposed to play make them do completely irrational things.”

Much of The Square takes place in such Emperor’s New Clothes territory. Later in the film, an artist clad in silk pyjamas and sneakers (played by Dominic West) finds the onstage Q&A he is participating in repeatedly interrupted by an audience member with Tourette’s who begins clapping out of context and turning the air blue. Politeness prevails among the audience and the po-faced artist carries on regardless. But the integrity of the moment has been shattered: everyone looks absurd, except perhaps the man with Tourette’s. Later still, in the film’s standout scene, a black-tie dinner is invaded by an ape-imitating performance artist who elicits amused titters that gradually fade to terrified silence as matters turn ugly. Has the joke gone too far, or just as far as art demands?

Östlund delights in confronting his audience with such booby-trapped human encounters. His previous film, Force Majeure (2014), portrayed a father who seemingly puts his own safety before that of his family when they are caught in an avalanche, and explored the resulting emotional fallout to blackly comic effect. The Square similarly takes unspoken social contracts and stress-tests them to uncomfortable and often hilarious extremes.

It is usually the curator who comes off worst but the art world as a whole is repeatedly and mercilessly lampooned. “When I was travelling around doing research for the film and going to contemporary art museums I got a little bit disappointed,” says Östlund. “There was very often a neon text on the wall and then just a couple of objects on the floor and that doesn’t provoke me. When Duchamp put the pissoir into the museum, it was a provocation. Now the provocation is gone, and I really think the contemporary art scene has lost connection with what’s going on outside.”

Is that not a danger for filmmakers too, I ask. Östlund seems delighted by this provocation. “Yes, definitely. For me it’s very important to talk to other people about the topics that I’m filming,” he says. “As soon as you can get a connection in a dialogue with someone about the topic you feel: ah, this is something that interests people.”

The Square can easily be enjoyed as straightforward farce and satire, but far from all of it is played for laughs. As the film wears on, it becomes increasingly clear that Christian’s conduct may have grave consequences. As a viewer, it is all too easy to feel its sting, especially if you are a white, liberal European male.

“The topics that we are trying to deal with are very important but I didn’t want to make it a posy, ‘important’ film,” says Östlund.

The idea came about while Östlund was making 2011’s Play, a seriously unnerving piece based on real-life incidents in Gothenburg in which children were preyed upon by others. “When I read through the court files it was obvious that the ‘bystander effect’ was super-strong. There were over 60 court cases and there was just one when an adult actually walked up and asked: what are you doing? Even though they were one metre away from the kids.”

Out of that was born the idea of “The Square”, an installation piece that in the film appears outside Christian’s museum. “My friend Kalle Boman and I came up with the idea to create a symbolic place that should be like a pedestrian crossing. A pedestrian crossing is a fantastic invention; with a couple of lines in the street car drivers accept this agreement that we should be careful with the pedestrians.

“With ‘The Square’, if someone goes and stands in [it], then it’s my obligation to address this person and ask ‘How can I help you?’ In a way it was like a traffic sign for reminding us of our fellow human beings.”

And here’s the twist: “The Square” is not just a plot device but a real functioning piece of public art. In fact, there are four such squares permanently installed in Sweden and Norway. “The police go there and talk to schoolchildren about basic values,” says Östlund with some pride. “Taxi drivers that go by say they look at this spot to see if someone is standing there.”

In a further example of art infiltrating life, however, Östlund has found himself accused of impropriety — not unlike Christian. In the film “The Square” is credited to the Argentine artist Lola Arias. Arias, who has made no such work, says that she was unaware of the fact and resents having been associated with it.

For all his concern for pricking our social conscience, when it comes to film-making Östlund is uncompromising. His preferred working method is to shoot and re-shoot a scene until he feels the cast has been worked into the appropriate emotional state.

“In Play I did 120 takes on one of the camera positions,” says the director. “When you tell the actors: this is how we’re going to shoot this film, they’re like, yes, yes, sure. They don’t realise how much work it is until they are on set. Then the first day they are shocked. When Elisabeth Moss came to Gothenburg to shoot she thought: oh, I will have five days in this small country, Sweden. They were the hardest days of her acting career, I think. And the same thing with Dominic West. He was like: ‘Are you working like this every day?’”

But it was Claes Bang, who gives a wonderfully deft performance as Christian, who had it worst. “I think by the end he was crying,” says Östlund with no discernible trace of remorse. “Now he is super-happy about the result — but when you’re in it, it’s quite something else.”

It is often said that all great directors have a cruel streak. Does Östlund think there is any truth to that? “Yes. I really consider myself a dictator when it comes to the set,” he says. “But I’m a good dictator.” Isn’t that what all dictators say, I ask. “Yes.”

‘The Square’ is released in the UK on March 16