Out of bounds: The spatial politics of civility in The Square (Östlund, 2017) and Happy End (Haneke, 2017)

Abstract

Abstract Ruben Östlund's The Square and Michael Haneke's Happy End, both released in 2017, skirt around the edges of immigration in Europe. Both address the question of who belongs and who does not in terms of boundaries ‐ not only the boundaries that determine where one country ends and another begins but also (and especially) those that determine who is a member of civil society. These films explore how the bounds of what is considered appropriate are breached in specific spatial contexts, questioning the meaning of 'civility' in both a social and a political sense, and prompting us to contemplate the various meanings of hospitality.