The cold blooded assassination of an ass and not the killing of a crustacean comes at the commencement of THE LOBSTER, a sort of Becket infused film, shot in Ireland by a Greek filmmaker, Yorgos Lanthimos.
Why murder a mule, you might ask, and why pin this tale on a donkey?
THE LOBSTER is an abstract look at love – about coupling, companionship and conformity. It takes place in a parallel world, in this case Ireland, a pretty good setting for a parallel world when you come to think of it. In this parallel world, single people are sent to a hotel resort where they meet and mingle with other singles for up to 45 days. If they have not paired off by then, they are turned into the animal of their choice.
The woods surrounding the resort are populated by a group called The Loners, and they are diametrically opposed to coupling.
Lanthimos is on record as saying, “The idea for this film came from discussion about how people feel like they need to always be in a relationship; how other people see those who can’t make it; how you’re considered a failure if you can’t be with someone; the lengths people go to in order to be with someone; the fear; and all those kind of things that follow us trying to mate.”
Lanthimos and his co-writer, Efthimis Filippou, succeed brilliantly in nurturing the seed of this idea and have fashioned a fascinating, off the wall film that boasts a terrific cast led by Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz.
Farrell plays a single man whose brother has been turned into a border collie and wishes to become a lobster should he not succeed in mating with another human. Weisz is a vision impaired woman who lives in the woods with The Loners. They meet and fall in love, a relationship not condoned by either of their tribes.
The camp commandant is played by Olivia Coleman, and her counterpart in The Woods is played by Lea Seydoux.
Prominent guests at the hook up hotel include Ben Wishaw as The Limping Man and John C Reilly as the Lisping Man.
Resembling something of the sensibilities of Flann O’Brien, THE LOBSTER is for those who don’t mind dabbling in a left field movie experience, as entertaining as it is unpredictable, engaging with a topic that’s very real but presented in a skewed reality.