Movie Reviews: Women Without Men, The Square, After.Life, Phyllis and Harold

THE SQUARE The Square — indebted to The Postman Always Rings Twice — fails to raise (James M.) Cain. The feature-helming debut of stuntman Nash Edgerton, co-written by brother Joel Edgerton, this Down Under noir confuses incoherent body pileups with "twists." Cheating construction-site manager Ray (David Roberts) and beautician Carla (Claire van der Boom) want to ditch their Sydney spouses and start anew, with the help of a duffel bag full of cash stashed in the attic by Carla's mulleted husband. An arson plot goes wrong, a halfwit is impaled, a baby is imperiled, a blackmailer is chained to a motel sink — all convoluted plot developments (with multiple holes and inconsistencies) that add zero suspense but increase your suspicion that the Edgerton boys simply thought more was better (as opposed to 2008's excellent, pared-down Postman rethink, Jerichow). Or maybe they were hoping to distract viewers from their film's most lethal flaw: two adulterous leads as sexless as Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman in Australia. (Melissa Anderson) (Nuart)

GO  WOMEN WITHOUT MEN Adapted from Shahrnush Parsipur's novel of the same name, Women Without Men opens with an act of suicide and the voice-over, "And I thought, the only freedom from pain is to be free from the world." Directed by Iranian artist Shirin Neshat, the film follows the interwoven, tragic paths of four women in Iran during the summer of 1953, when political upheaval stirred by Western power plays resulted in the fall of democracy and the fanning of religious fundamentalism. Fledgling political activist Munis (Shabnam Toloui), whose suicide opens the film, lives with her brother, who browbeats her about her failure to conform to religious dictates; bone-thin, dead-eyed Zarin (Orsolya Tóth) works in a brothel for a brutal madam before running away; the devout Faezeh (Pegah Ferydoni) dreams of nothing but marriage until an act of violence forces her to reevaluate her life; and unhappily married Fakhri (Arita Shahrzad) flees her marriage to a boorish army officer after a past love — a cultured man — returns to her life. Working from a screenplay she co-wrote with Shoja Azari, Neshat employs dialogue that is often didactic, but that weakness is forgiven in the face of stellar acting from the ensemble and gorgeously composed and shot images — from the carefully draped bodies in a bathhouse to the desolate Zarin's trek down an isolated road as the fabric she's clothed in flaps around her body. (Ernest Hardy) (Music Hall, Town Center)