Colin Farrell Must Find a Wife or Face the Consequences in The Lobster

Posted on September 5, 2015

One of the hits at the Cannes Film Festival was the dark comedy/satire The Lobster; it won the Jury Prize. The film is set in County Kerry, Ireland, in a dystopian future that looks a lot like our world, but with some very bizarre changes.

Everyone must be happily married in this society. The penalties for not being happily paired off are draconian. In fact, it's a lot like Logan's Run for single people. Colin Farrell plays David, a man whose wife left him for another woman. Under the rules of The City, he checks into the Hotel for 45 days. He must find love within that time frame or be turned into an animal of his choice and released into the nearby woods. David has decided that he will be a lobster because they live 100 years and are always fertile. An "excellent choice" the Hotel's manager (Olivia Colman) tells him.

The guests can extend their stay by hunting the Loners in the forest. The Loners refuse to conform to coupledom and are just as strict about allowing no romantic interaction of any kind. David falls in love with a woman in the Hotel called the Heartless Woman (Angeliki Papoulia), but when she kills his dog -- who is really his brother -- he is forced to flee into the woods. He falls in love with the Short Sighted Woman (Rachel Weisz) and falls afoul of the Loners' rules. Can David find a happy ending in a society gone mad?

The film was directed by Dogtooth director Yorgos Lanthimos, who co-wrote the script with Efthimis Filippou. The screenplay who won the A.R.T.E. International Prize for Best CineMart 2013 Project at the 42nd Rotterdam International Film Festival. The film will be screened at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

The cast is stellar: Ben Whishaw, Léa Seydoux, John C. Reilly, Ashley Jensen, Jessica Barden and Ariane Labed co-star in the film. Lanthimos' absurd and darkly comic take on society's assumptions and strict rules of modern society is a true original. Here's the trailer:



More from Watchers Watch