The Lobster

UK Release Date. 16 October 2015
Certification. 15
Running Time. 1 hour 59 mins
Director. Yorgos Lanthimos
Cast. Jessica Barden, Olivia Colman, Colin Farrell, Ashley Jensen, Angeliki Papoulia, John C. Reilly, Léa Seydoux, Rachel Weisz, Ben Whishaw.
Rating. 77%

Review.

Yorgos Lanthimos' The Lobster is precisely the kind of project the independent production company A24 was imagined for. Few, if any, mainstream Hollywood studios would green-light a film in which a dystopian society requires single people to find a life partner in 45 days or else be transformed into an animal of their choice and released into the wild.

The Lobster is Yorgos Lanthimos' fifth full-length feature film and was his first in English, following the Academy Award-nominated Dogtooth [Best Foreign Language Film of the Year] and the enigmatic and provocative Alps. 

As with Lanthimos' other films, it is only once the complex, rigid rules of the narrative are established that the character's impenetrable actions begin to make sense. Impressively, Lanthimos ensures that even though the plot grows ever more far-fetched, the storytelling remains grounded and understated. Any given scene may be comic, grotesque or sinister - or a mix of all three. The director gleefully blurs the boundaries between farce and dystopian horror.

Animals are present throughout the film, yet never at the forefront; totems of singletons who have departed to another place. The transformation into an animal of one's choice is the representation of the afterlife for people deemed redundant in a secular, utilitarian society. There's a wonderful scene midway through the film where a young woman with lovely, long, blonde hair (Emma O'Shea) is presumably transformed into a miniature pony with a beautiful, blonde mane after failing to find a partner in the 45 days allotted. Her best friend, Nosebleed Woman (Jessica Barden) kneels in front of her to say her final goodbyes, as if she was attending a wake or a graveyard. 

The main character, David (played by Colin Farrell) shows little emotion, no matter what happens around him. Farrell once again proves that oppressed, sheepish vulnerability is his strongest suit as an actor - In Bruges, The Killing Of A Sacred Deer and The Banshees Of Inisherin. The lack of emotion is contrasted with the solemn music and a matter-of-fact melodramatic narration from Rachel Weisz. Her character, Short-Sighted Woman doesn't appear on screen until well into the film, but she is heard from the outset. 

Wickedly funny and unexpectedly moving, The Lobster is a striking allegory for the increasingly superficial systems of contemporary courtship, including the like-for-like algorithms of online dating sites and the swipe-right snap judgements of Tinder and the like. What begins as a satirical protest against the societal preference for nuclear coupledom, slyly escalates into a love story of profound tenderness and originality.