If it weren’t for Rachel Weisz, The Lobster would be in the running for the most overrated film of this young year. An intriguing concept does not a film make.
Greek Director Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth), in his English language debut, draws up a doozy of a premise. In a dystopian society that prohibits single people, The Lobster sets its sights on a convention-like gathering where singles come to either find their match within a specified number of days, or face a final fate of being transformed into none other than the animal of their choice. Talk about pressure dating.
David, (Colin Farrell/the only character with an actual name) as subdued as most of the proceedings here, looks rather dejected after his girlfriend dumped him. Distracted and shell shocked, he listens to a bunch of rules and regulations as he checks in. It might as well be an Est meeting for all the excited David seems. It’s fun trying to figure out what is going on. At first.
Little jokes like trying to match people up with similar shortcomings (John C. Reilly’s character lisps) point to amusing ironies and familiar psychologies. After awhile everyone starts to seem overly serious. David’s nothing but earnest as he declares wanting to be a lobster should he fail to find a partner.
And thus David becomes ready for Act 2. A counterculture group that strenuously eschews relationships serve as shooting targets for the mainstreamers. In hiding and donning some serious camouflage, they take refuge in a nearby forest. There Weisz dangerously catches David’s eye. A strange yet rather uncompelling relationship develops.
Weisz makes a valiant effort to humanize what increasingly becomes a preposterously arcane film environment. The plot’s tensions build for awhile then snap into a lackluster, cluttered homestretch. Just when something amazing or tragic or ironic needs to be happening, things slow to a crawl.
In Dogtooth, Lanthimos’ 2009 Cannes Certain de Regard winner, the premise was equally bizarre. Children sealed off in the extreme from the outside world by their parents’ obsession with social conditioning come to garner more and more interest as the outlandish state of their isolation increases. Conversely, in The Lobster, things go from droll weird to dull weirder, with barely a whimper of dramatic heft.