The tyranny of coupledom and the oppression of singledom, like neighbouring police states, are the subject of this intriguing, flawed film. It is the English-language debut from Yorgos Lanthimos, standard bearer for the Greek new wave, co-written with his longtime collaborator Efthymis Filippou: a macabre, absurdist satire in their unmistakable, self-aware style. This is custom-built for the cognoscenti cinephile audiences who duly adore it, and it really is enthralling and funny a lot of the time. Yet, both times I’ve seen The Lobster, my muscles ached with the sheer effort of trying to love it as much as I was supposed to.
After a hilarious and creepy start, The Lobster jumps the shark. This happens about half way through; its contrivances and contortions lose their angular rigour and point. It runs out of ideas and its style becomes a mannerism. The film loses interest in its extraordinary animal-transformation premise, and it abandons its initial, fascinating hotel setting, and all the superbly deadpan characters there, in favour of a new bunch of characters in a new place who are not as funny or interesting. It also asks the audience for an emotional investment in a lead-cum-narrator played by Rachel Weisz who is disconcertingly less compelling than every other character.
We are in a dystopian future where single people are forced to attend what amounts to a month-long dating retreat at a luxury hotel, presided over by a stern manager, wonderfully played by Olivia Colman. If they have not found a partner by the end, they will be transformed into a wild animal of their choice and released into the surrounding countryside. People can gain extra time with hunting sessions where they can shoot the renegade singletons who hide out in the woodland. Each kill wins them a potentially vital extra day in the dating arena. Everyone speaks with a lack of emotion, like cyborgs under sedation.
Colin Farrell plays David, a plump moustachioed guy who has come along with his dog (actually his transformed brother) and meets various other unhappy daters played by Ashley Jensen, Ben Whishaw and John C Reilly, who are all excellent, as is the inscrutable maid played by Lanthimos’s partner Ariane Labed. To their dismay – suppressed, like all emotions – they find that any attachments have to be vetted for romantic plausibility by the management. Phoney alliances are not allowed and neither, incidentally, is masturbation, on pain of having your hand rammed into an electric toaster, at breakfast, in front of everyone.
Men find themselves faking character traits for themselves that they notice in prospective partners, on the questionable assumption that non-opposites attract: it leads to bizarre cymbal clashes of non-communication. David is asked what animal he would like to be in case things don’t work out, and he specifies a lobster on the grounds they live a long time and he also loves the sea. But David’s fate is to cross with that of the singletons in the forest, led by Lea Séydoux, and with Weisz; they live in a community that is just as weird and heartlessly insistent in its own way on non-coupledom.
Of course, the forest dwellers and the hotel guests are to some degree mirror images of each other, and the idea of escaping a prison of arranged marriage into a wilderness of arranged unmarriage is part of the point. But the hotel is funnier and more engaging than the forest, and introducing a raft of undeveloped new characters causes a loss of focus. Oddly, featuring a huge number of well-known actors thinly spread in lots of medium-to-smallish roles makes it look like a mid-period Woody Allen.
The first half really is great: hilarious and horrifying and very seductive in narrative terms. The seaside hotel itself (the Parknasilla spa resort in County Kerry) has an eerie look to it: modern and sleek but also faintly down-at-heel. Lanthimos has an eye for the disquieting hotel, with its private and public spaces in which guests consent to be on theatrical display.
The Lobster interestingly questions the whole idea of leisure, and the luxury hotel as a secular heaven, something to be longed for and aspired to, the relaxing break that will validate your lifestyle. This hotel is a nightmare community of lost souls. It reminded me a bit of Portmeirion in Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner.
I have had an agnostic relationship with Lanthimos in the past: Dogtooth (2009) remains his best movie, Alps (2011) took his self-awareness to the level of self-congratulation. The Lobster is a distinctive, mid-level work: sharp claws, not much meat.
