Movie Review: The Lobster

Call off the search. Here’s the weirdest movie of the year (and maybe the best).

“Freaky-deakies need love too,” Tracy Jordan once opined. Those words must have been taken to heart by oddball Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, making his first English-language feature abroad with The Lobster.

What’s it all about? That might be the most impossible film-related question of 2015.

Let’s say The Lobster is Lanthimos’ version of a love story, though that classification comes with a massive caution, especially when you consider that, by the same definition, 2009’s explicit, demented Dogtooth was his version of a family flick.

It begins with a recently dumped—and dumpy—Colin Farrell checking into a strange hotel with a canine companion. His character, David, is quizzed by the desk clerk on his sexual preferences. Unrelated, he introduces her to the dog: it’s his brother, Bob. No one flinches, on screen anyway. A quick glance at the cinema audience should reveal plenty of perplexed, flittering eyelids.

As we come to discover – kind of – we’ve been dropped into a dystopian future where single people are given 45 days to pair up at the hotel, because any existence other than a monogamous one is considered criminal. If 45 days pass and a guest doesn’t find a romantic partner – essentially, with one identical trait – they’re transformed into an animal and shunted off into the surrounding woods. They get to choose the animal themselves though, so there’s that.

David’s already earmarked “the lobster” but that doesn’t mean he’s ready for a lifetime of seafaring just yet. In the picture’s first half, he attempts to court a young woman with a perpetual nosebleed (Jessica Barden) and a sociopathic femme fatale referred to in the credits only as “Heartless Woman” (Angeliki Papoulia, of Dogtooth). Unwilling to fake a nosebleed – like another bachelor (Ben Whishaw) – David instead pretends to be a sociopath too, so that he may graduate to a couple’s room with the Heartless Woman. Boy, is that more trouble than it’s worth.

The curious cast of characters – including John C. Reilly as “Lisping Man” and Ashley Jensen as “Biscuit Woman” – expands with the introduction of “loners” hiding out beyond the hotel’s grounds.

Their leader (Léa Seydoux), refreshingly, doesn’t intimidate singles with inter-species reconstruction. Still, she’s pretty militant about singledom, threatening any flirts with a punishment known as “the red kiss.” You’ll hear its description and think that maybe life with the Heartless Woman isn’t so bad by comparison.

Of course, it’s among the “loners” that David finally meets the woman of his dreams (Rachel Weisz). She’s short-sighted, just like him. How could he resist?

Lanthimos has concocted the script with Efthymis Filippou, his co-conspirator on Dogtooth and its follow-up, Alps. The dialogue is piercing and jagged, delivered in short bursts after interminable pauses. Farrell, Weisz and company speak as if they were awkward adolescents, which is fitting, given their circumstances. Or, is this simply the language barrier between Lanthimos and his actors at play? If so, the result is a happy accident indeed.

You can’t call the cinematographic achievements accidental. Thimios Bakatakis’ deliberate, patient camera has two modes: hold and stalk. You think he’d been turned into a leopard. From Dogtooth to The Lobster, he, Lanthimos and Filippou have perfected the art of inspiring suspense, dread and belly-laughs with their deranged social satires.

But what is The Lobster all about? Is it merely a nutty parable? A fairy-tale turned literal? An opportunity for Colin Farrell to be redeemed after True Detective’s second season (which has way clunkier dialogue and no good excuse for it, FYI)?

I see in it a relationship comedy with life and death stakes; the social and self-imposed pressure of finding a match amplified and magnified, until we recognise how strange and difficult the hunt for a mate can be (a point driven home by some unforgettable final shots). Love: it's a lot of work, even without the threat of amateur surgery hanging over our heads.

Or, like much of Greek’s weird-wave, is The Lobster a comment on Greece’s crumbling ecosystem and financial ruin? As austerity measures roll out and citizens revolt, filmmakers are increasingly depicting modern Greek living in absurd and abstract ways.

It may be in English, but The Lobster has no easy translation. Money’s not even a concern in its universe. At least, not anymore. Rather, Lanthimos extrapolates, hearts and pelvises are next for draconian regulation. You gotta laugh.

5/5

In cinemas October 22. Rated MA15+ for strong themes and violence.