The Lob­ster

For Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos, in life as in the movies, it’s all in the game. In his break­through 2009 fea­ture, Dog­tooth, a con­trol­ling father set out to con­strain his three grown-up chil­dren with­in a cul­tur­al and lin­guis­tic alter­na­tive uni­verse, while his 2011 fol­low-up, Alps, fea­tured a mys­te­ri­ous coterie of hos­pi­tal work­ers imper­son­at­ing lost loved ones to heal griev­ing families.

This time, to go with a big­ger bud­get and Eng­lish dia­logue, he’s widened the scope con­sid­er­ably: now it’s an entire soci­ety set­ting an extreme agen­da, main­tain­ing the het­ero­nor­ma­tive imper­a­tives of cou­ple­dom with an unyield­ing enforce­ment régime. Col­in Far­rel­l’s poor schlub, for instance, has just been dumped by his mis­sus, so he’s shipped off to a coun­try hotel with all the oth­er sin­gle­tons, the object being to pair him with a new woman inside 45 days – or face the con­se­quences. Those still left on the shelf are used as hunt­ing fod­der, or at worst forcibly trans­formed into an ani­mal of their own choos­ing. That bright-eyed col­lie at Farrell’s heel? It’s actu­al­ly his broth­er, anoth­er casu­al­ty of the dat­ing game.

Okaayyyyy. If that sounds like it’s just get­ting a bit too sil­ly, fear not, since the whole ani­mal trans­for­ma­tion angle is more of an audi­ence-bait­ing ruse than an essen­tial part of the nar­ra­tive, which is more dystopi­an satire than sur­re­al flounc­ery. Like Luis Buñuel and Michael Haneke before him, Lan­thi­mos cre­ates look­ing-glass worlds as a way of goad­ing us into recon­sid­er­ing every­day pre­sump­tions – here pick­ing apart the social fetishi­sa­tion of the cou­ple, con­sid­er­ing whether pair­ing-off in prac­tice means fak­ing it to match a prospec­tive partner’s nest­ing check­list. For fel­low inductee Ben Whishaw, that means whack­ing him­self to force the nose­bleeds he hopes will endear him to a sim­i­lar­ly afflict­ed female, thus pre­sent­ing his best chance of leav­ing the hotel alive.

Fans of Lan­thi­mos’ pre­vi­ous work will be glad to hear that his slight­ly evil sense of humour remains intact, but new­com­ers drawn in by the high-pro­file art­house cast­ing – a deglammed Rachel Weisz is sin­gu­lar­ly beguil­ing as a rather for­lorn for­est-dwelling lon­er – may take time to attune them­selves to his defi­ant aes­thet­ic, which bleach­es the colour from the images and has his esteemed actors rather per­verse­ly dial down their per­for­mances. The intent is evi­dent­ly so the film’s ideas aren’t blurred by any messy emo­tion­al res­o­nance, prob­a­bly mak­ing it eas­i­er to admire than to enjoy.

In the end though, The Lob­ster​’s sheer thought-through sin­gu­lar­i­ty leaves a last­ing impres­sion, since here is a film­mak­er in con­trol of every sin­gle aspect of his craft, deliv­er­ing an unusu­al and uncom­pro­mis­ing vision. So often clas­si­cal music is used to give a film a quick emo­tion­al fix, yet Lan­thi­mos’ star­tling­ly adept use of string quar­tets from Beethoven to Brit­ten and Shostakovich not only sets exact­ly the right mood of edgy con­tem­pla­tion but also makes a par­tic­u­lar­ly appo­site the­mat­ic fit, since the quar­tet form remains the ulti­mate demon­stra­tion of how indi­vid­ual instru­men­tal voic­es and effec­tive ensem­ble scor­ing are both need­ed to realise expres­sive com­po­si­tion­al inten­si­ty. Togeth­er and apart, it all con­tributes to the same score.