Dystopian fantasies breed in such profusion on the screen these days that filmmakers are hard pushed to come up with anything truly weird. But Greek writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos has done it with The Lobster, set in a near future that has been colonised so comprehensively by the politics of family values that singles are viewed as a threat to be eliminated.
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Become widowed or divorced and you're likely to wind up in a euphemistically styled resort hotel where you have 45 days to find a mate. Fail and you're transformed into an animal of your choice, in danger of being preyed upon by species of all sorts.
It's the first film in English from Lanthimos, who has attracted a large and accomplished international cast to his cause probably because his nightmarish tilt on the future is shot through with plenty of sinister shafts of deadpan humour. They're so deadpan, in fact, that his actors frequently deliver their lines as if lightly anaesthetised by the prevailing spirit of conformity.
There are rebels, though, confirmed singles who prefer to take their chances in the wild, hunting the many animals spawned by the system and trying to elude the predatory hotel guests who are regularly taken out to hunt them. If these desperate singles can bag enough dissidents to go through the transformation process in their stead, their search for a partner is extended.
The film's star is Colin Farrell, who has gone from wild to mild in recent years. He still shows up occasionally in hard-drinking, drug-taking roles, but he's been showing off his diffident side and his part here as David, a paunchy architect with glasses and a hang-dog air, is typical.
David's wife has left him and he's arrived at the hotel with such a pessimistic view of his prospects that he's already chosen his animal – the lobster, because it has a long, fertile life and blue blood, giving it, he thinks, a certain aristocratic cachet.
The film is at its most sardonically inspired in the hotel scenes, where the comforts of the English country-house hotel are arranged around a rigid set of rules backed up by an array of sadistic punishments. Presiding over it all is Olivia Colman, haughtily combining the qualities of games mistress, tour director and concentration-camp commandant.
David puts up with this for a while. Then he goes AWOL, joining the rebels and pairing up with Rachel Weisz only to learn that his new allies are as strictly conformist as his old jailers. In this corner of the wood, love, lust and flirting are all forbidden – a rule made especially ironic by the fact that the chief enforcer is played by the new Bond girl, Lea Seydoux.
There's a wealth of bleak comedy in all of this but, having carefully laid out his thesis, Lanthimos doesn't know where to take it or what he really thinks about it. The ending is frightening but frustrating – fudged for lack of a point of view.
