The Lobster: ‘One of the best films of Cannes and 2015’
Film4It’s a surreal satire about a dating game in which humans who can’t couple up are turned into animals. Nicholas Barber explains why The Lobster is Cannes’ first five-star film.
So far in Cannes, we’ve had Toby Jones cuddling up to a giant flea in Tale of Tales, and Tom Hardy chomping a two-headed lizard in Mad Max: Fury Road. But neither film is as wholeheartedly and disturbingly weird as The Lobster. A deadpan comedy with echoes of Orwell, Kafka and Kubrick, it’s the third film to be directed and co-written by Yorgos Lanthimos, maker of Dogtooth, but it’s his first film in English, and his first to feature such big names as Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, John C Reilly and Ben Whishaw. When the project was announced, some critics worried that Lanthimos’s peculiarly Greek surrealism wouldn’t work when it was combined with these more mainstream elements, but it turns out that there was no need to fear. Bolstered by an array of pitch-perfect performances, the Lobster is as twisted and unsettling as his previous films, but it also fits snugly into the tradition of the best British absurdism, from Monty Python and The Prisoner to Big Train and Chris Morris’s Jam.
Farrell, who disguises his movie starriness with a paunch, a thick moustache, and a perpetual air of discomfort, plays an Irishman who has just been left by his wife. He has to get back on the dating circuit, but in the alternate reality of The Lobster, that’s a strictly organised process. First, he is transported to an old-fashioned coastal hotel – the kind of drab place that seems to be out of season all year round. Once the receptionist has jotted down his dietary requirements, she goes on to ask him to nominate his sexual preference; after hearing that bisexuality is off the menu, Farrell’s long, frowning pause before picking “heterosexual” is as funny as anything he does in In Bruges. The hotel’s no-nonsense manageress, a priceless Olivia Colman, then runs through the rules of the establishment. Farrell has 45 days to find a suitable life partner among his fellow guests. He can earn extra days by hunting down and capturing the single people – or ‘loners’ – who hide in the nearby woods, but if he hasn’t paired off with anyone by the end of his stay, he will be transformed into the animal of his choice. He chooses a lobster: he enjoys swimming, after all. The manageress is impressed. Most people choose dogs, she remarks, which is why there are so many dogs in the world.
For all its craziness, The Lobster is a shrewd commentary on the societal pressures we’re all under to form relationships, and the deceptions and self-deceptions some of us resort to as a result. In the film’s totalitarian universe, hotel guests aren’t allowed to get together with someone unless they share a “defining characteristic”, but that characteristic can be as arbitrary as a slight limp or a fondness for biscuits. In our own universe, marriages have been built on less.
Having said that, The Lobster is never in danger of being a clunking, obvious lampoon. The genius of the film is that it is so downbeat and matter-of-fact about its gloriously silly concept. Speaking calmly in formal sentences, the actors never signal that there is anything ridiculous about their situation, and no one is shocked by the manageress’s regulations, even when she is instructing them to put their hands in a toaster. Everyone is used to things being the way they are. When a camel meanders past the characters, no one bats an eyelid, so it’s left to the viewer to wonder who the unlucky ungulate might once have been.
But be warned: The Lobster presents some truly grisly sequences with the same cold-blooded detachment, and the unblinking treatment of these atrocities makes them all the more distressing. Some scenes in the film’s second half are especially hard to take. When the action moves out of the hotel and into the woods, the comedy doesn’t stop, but the film also becomes a thriller, a romantic drama, and an out-and-out horror movie. Many viewers will be alienated by this harshness. But no one who sees Lanthimos’s profound and richly detailed satire will forget it. It’s bound to be hailed as one of the best films of Cannes, and of 2015.
★★★★★
