Squared Love is certified insane and it's nice to see that Netflix knows what it's got on its hands. A quick perusal of the plot synopsis is sure to make many potential viewers shake their heads and possibly feel overwhelmed as they wonder what direction this story could go. reconsider his life choices after falling in love with a mysterious model who leads a double life. That's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the idiosyncrasies this Polish rom-com has up its sleeve. They don't touch on the fact that the model has ties to an organized crime syndicate, the journalist is raising his emotionally stunted niece, and the hipster has a Clark Kent-esque costume that allows him to serve as a teacher without having the secret identity. of the. discovered.
Squared Love follows Klaudia, a world famous model who has a secret identity as a school teacher. She is able to keep her two different lives separate and aims to pay off her family's debts to a crime syndicate by taking on various high-profile modeling jobs. She risks losing her job as a teacher because she is always late for school and doesn't get along with her superiors. Her ordered life is thrown out of balance when she meets journalist Enzo (Banasiuk).
Director: Filip Zylber
Writers: Natalia Matuszek, Wiktor Piatkowski
Stars: Adrianna Chlebicka, Mateusz Banasiuk, Mikolaj Roznerski
He is a playboy who is separated from his family and struggles to meet the challenge when asked to take care of one of his relatives. He and Klaudia spend a lot of time together because they are working on a TV commercial together. They are clearly attracted to each other, but they both lie about who they really are and this causes problems. She feels that she will lose herself if everyone knows who she really is and she has to face all of her fears. This prevents her from going after Enzo completely and leaves them questioning what they are willing to sacrifice to be together.
It's commendable that the movie didn't even try to make the main characters sympathetic or likeable. Enzo is rich, handsome and doesn't seem to work very hard. We see him picking up random women in parking lots and it's hard to believe that he can seduce race girls in a matter of seconds just by running his hands over the hood of their cars. Klaudia is aloof and aloof, as well as being very willing to destroy an entire set simply because she wants to quickly vacate her model work premises. She's also a model, it's hard to support her and it also poses a problem for the director as she has to find an innovative way to film a woman while she stands and... poses. At least if she were a singer or an actress, it could be argued that she has a trade and should remain dedicated to studying it, but modeling success is often based on whether or not she was born beautiful. The fact that there's a lot of exercise involved in staying in shape, but Abbey Lee Kershaw can't be working as hard as your average trader. They commit to this bold choice and try to plunge us into the cutthroat industry of Polish fashion.
The use of Warsaw as a setting was also fascinating. Here, it's a sunny urban spot with a thriving fashion industry and a swimsuit store on every corner. While there are certainly no famous journalists in any modern city, this almost wants to be something like the 1930s. We're led to believe that the two main characters are incredibly famous, when that conveniently helps move the plot along, and yet, we see more of their lives outside of their illustrious careers. Klaudia's modeling is reduced to scenes where she poses in a disgusting curly wig and we never see him putting together one of her items. Her works end up being just background noise at some point and the script attempts to ask serious questions about the failings of the Polish education system and the responsibility advertisers have to be honest about the products they sell. It's all terribly altruistic, and yet utterly absurd. That mix is admirable in its own weird way and the fact that the writers aimed high was appreciated.
Where Squared Love really disappointed was in the romantic encounters between the two leads. Plus, they're fascinatingly bizarre, and you can take some pleasure in watching actors try to grapple with all the jarring and contradictory traits they've been asked to incorporate into their characterizations of these people. The limitations of the actors become very clear in the scenes where these two have to get up close and personal. They both choose to smolder in almost every scene, but there isn't much chemistry between them and the script doesn't allow them to get into too many crazy shenanigans.