Right from its title, Oscar Hudson’s droll debut “Straight Circle” evokes paradoxical oddities, which the writer-director layers atop his deadpan satire on nationalism and geographical boundaries. A tale of two enemy soldiers patrolling a militarized border from inside a common outpost, the movie’s fictitious premise gradually transforms, and eventually transcends the shortcomings of its broad political scope the more it leans into abstraction.
The film arrives with a bang, introducing the fragile ceasefire between its warring (though unnamed) desert nations via a smart split-screen prologue during its first five minutes. Amid pomp and circumstance, leaders on either side of a rickety fence stand on ceremony, inadvertently interrupting one
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