The Lobster

His wife has fallen in love with someone else, therefore David (Colin Farrell) must leave The City and go to The Hotel.  At The Hotel, he has 45 days to fall in love again or he will be transformed into an animal.  His animal of choice is a lobster.  When he has only a week or so left, he fakes interest in a woman who is best described as a psychopath.  It does not work out well.  He flees The Hotel and joins the Loners.  The Loners live in the woods and it is a high crime for them to have any romantic involvement, a sudden reversal of the other parts of the world.

 

The dystopian world is, like Gaul, separated into three parts.  There are the couples who live in The City.  The police are suspicious of people wandering about alone in the city; at one point, a woman is interrogated regarding the whereabouts of her husband and the cops don't appear satisfied by the answers.  At the Hotel are the singles who want to be couples and avoid being turned into animals.  In this bizarre universe, attraction appears to be predicated on a shared oddity.  There is a woman who suffers regular nosebleeds who couples with a man who fakes nosebleeds.  See, they have something in common.  When David becomes an outcast and joins the Loners, he finds himself attracted to a woman (Rachel Weisz) who is short-sighted like he is.  However, when that common ailment ends, he finds it difficult to be attracted to her.  Very strange.

 

Singles at The Hotel can extend their limit of 45 days by capturing Loners.  There are nightly hunts where Singles charge into the woods and shoot Loners with tranquilizer darts.  Captured Loners are transformed into animals and sent back into the woods.  As such, there are odd animals stalking about through the later part of the movie; the camel was the most humorous.

 

Virtually everyone met in the movie is socially awkward.  Indeed, if you are single and, despite knowing your fate is to become an animal, still have trouble pairing off, you must be awkward.  Some have said that Farrell provides a powerful performance but I didn't get that feeling.  This movie would work just fine with a bunch of people who couldn't act, in fact it might work better.  The emotional ranges go from A all the way to B.

 

Fun dark comedy and worth seeing.