Imagine if Wes Anderson decided to set The Bachelor in a Kafkaesque dystopia. That would give a clear indication just how bizarre director Yorgos Lanthimos' The Lobster truly is, and some idea of how wonderful it can be.
When his wife leaves him, David (Colin Farrell) is forced to move to The Hotel. According to the rules of the curious dystopia in which he lives, he now has 45 days to find love or else be turned into an animal. So with his dog (formerly his brother Bob) by his side, David is plunged into a strange world of social mixers, poolside flirting, and hunting 'loners' through The Woods for sports. All in the hope of finding love, and avoiding the fate of being transformed into a lobster.
The Lobster blasts straight through surrealism and starts to circle closer to absurdist. The society created by The City and The Hotel are not functional entities, but rather an allegorical examination of the importance placed on relationships. The absurdity is increased when it becomes clear just how codified such behaviour are – from the harsh methods taken by The Hotel to encourage partnership, to the random sweeps of The City to root out loners.
Characters also fall into this strange world view. Each character is defined by a characteristic (close sighted, walks with a limp, has a lovely singing voice), and sees their chance of finding a partnership as sharing that trait with another. A shared commonality that binds their relationship. Their conversations with each other border on schemas rather than genuine, short practised snippets of small talk, carefully calculated for response. It is a markedly bleak view of relationships - both in the outwards societal pressures to engage in such behaviour, and in the expectations of individuals.
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The result however is a wonderfully black comedy, that is sometimes so cutting as to almost be surgical. In what it says about love and relationships, The Lobster is cruelly funny. At times the laughter is genuine, at others Lanthimos (Dogtooth) forces you to laugh to hide the pain as he dissects characters' motivations.
Colin Farrell is surprising as David. His deadpan delivery, and perfect timing, make him a natural for this sort of comedy. Yet David is more than a comedic character, he is also an enigma. Farrell plays him as guarded and calculating, and despite the narrator's account of him we can never be utterly sure of his motives (after all, she is blinded by him). The result is an ambiguous character, that plays perfectly into the film's ending.
This is not the sort of film that will appeal to everyone, rather it is exactly the sort of film that will polarise audience reactions. For those with a taste for the surreal, this is a unique bitterly comedic gem that will richly reward those that are willing to put in the effort to understand it's strangeness.
Originally published in X-Press Magazine
