David (a fatted up Colin Farrell)
chooses the titular crustacean.
A short-sighted individual, he’s
just been dumped by his shortsighted lover in favour of another short-sighted man.
In Lanthimos’ world, hooking
up is all about finding someone
who shares something in common with you, no matter how
trivial. In the movie’s most hilarious sequence, David attempts
to win the affections of a woman
known for being completely
heartless (Angeliki Papoulia) by
pretending to be a sociopath
himself. Another guest (Ben
Whishaw) forces nose bleeds
upon himself to win over a
young girl afflicted by chronic
epistaxis.
The hotel ‘guests’ are forced to
endure demonstrations of the
advantages of coupledom; one
shows how a partner can perform the Heimlich should you
choke on your food at dinner;
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a maid (Ariane Labed) grinds
seductively on David’s groin to
the point of forcing an erection,
but cruelly no further; David is
forced to have one hand incapacitated to show how “two is
always better than one.”
In the nearby woods lives a
band of proud ‘loners’, a terrorist group intent on overthrowing the married status quo and
inflicting singledom on their oppressors. In the movie’s second
half, David finds himself taken in
by this group and falling for one
of its members (Rachel Weisz,
who at 45 appears to be aging
backwards), an act punishable
by extreme torture.
It’s testament to how twisted
Lanthimos’ comedy is that the
biggest laugh out loud moment
of The Lobster is a shot of a
bloodied corpse of a previously
cute and cuddly dog. His film
is a throwback to a time when
comedy and arthouse weren’t
2016 - ISSUE 2
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