The Lobster
I liked it quite a lot, although I understand how it could test your patience. It is strange, dry, uncomfortable and very Lanthimos: nobody speaks or reacts like a normal person, and yet that absurd world says recognizable things about couples, loneliness and pressure.
The starting idea is excellent: if you do not find a partner within a fixed period, you are turned into the animal you have chosen. What unsettles is not only the rule, but how normally everyone accepts it. Choosing to become a lobster, dog or pony feels like ticking a form. The horror works because the system treats it like paperwork.
The hotel is a polite nightmare. Everything is regulated: desire, compatibility, sex, masturbation, conversations, dances and hunting loners. John C. Reilly's burned hand for masturbating sums up that cruel logic: break an intimate rule, receive physical punishment. Nobody seems scandalized.
The sexual test on David, with the maid rubbing against him to measure his reaction, is also brutal. There is nothing erotic about it; it is humiliating, mechanical and cold. The body becomes a file. What matters is whether he responds as expected.
Jessica Barden made me laugh and feel sorry for her. Once you recognize her as the crazy girl from The End of the F***ing World, you cannot unsee her. Here she has that mix of fragility, strangeness and danger that suits her very well. Her character clings to an absurd compatibility, like everyone else, because in that world any shared trait is worth more than a true emotion.
The blonde woman turned into a pony is also a ridiculous and very sad idea. From the outside, you think someone like that could easily find a partner, but that is exactly the cruel joke: beauty does not save you if you do not fit into the right box. A whole person is reduced to the bureaucratic consequence of not pairing up in time.
The suicide of the woman who jumps from the hotel window is very hard because of how cold it is. There is no great melodrama; there is failure, despair and an almost indifferent reaction. Even that feels like another consequence of protocol.
When David tries to pair up with the heartless woman, the film becomes more sinister. He pretends not to feel in order to survive, but discovers what it means to be with someone truly incapable of compassion. Her killing his brother and appearing with blood on her legs as if nothing had happened is grotesque. And when he is taken to the manager because he cried, the idea is clear: human pain matters less than the coherence of the profile.
The move to the forest is very intelligent because it does not turn the loners into the good ones. Escaping the hotel does not mean reaching freedom, but entering another dictatorship. On one side you are forced to have a partner; on the other you are forbidden to fall in love. Two opposite societies, but equally shameful: both turn an intimate decision into a collective rule.
Léa Seydoux works very well as the leader of that other authoritarianism. Her world seems rebellious, but it also punishes desire. Lanthimos does not stop at "society forces us to pair up"; he also criticizes the opposite rigidity, the idea that needing someone is a betrayal of independence.
The relationship between David and the short-sighted woman is beautiful inside the strangeness because it begins as an attempt to find something authentic amid absurd rules. But even there the film is cruel: they too need a shared characteristic to justify the bond. They have escaped the systems, but not the logic those systems have placed inside their heads.
That is why the ending seems so good and so sad to me. When he considers blinding himself because she has been blinded, the film pushes compulsory compatibility to its limit. The doubt over whether he dares, escapes or remains paralyzed in the bathroom is perfect. Her waiting in the restaurant makes everything more uncomfortable and human.
The second half feels less rounded to me than the hotel section, and I understand those who say the premise is stretched too far. Sometimes Lanthimos seems to enjoy his own device so much that the film becomes too cold. But that coldness is also part of its strength: it makes the absurd seem normal and the normal seem monstrous.
It did not remind me too much of Bugonia. There I saw more nerve, chaos and delirium; here everything is more geometric, deadpan and conceptual. But you can recognize shared obsessions: absurd rules, social violence, submitted bodies and characters trapped in systems that deform the human.
In the end, for me it remains a very original, uncomfortable and powerful satire about the obligation to have a partner and the opposite obligation not to need anyone. Having a partner should be a choice, not proof of normality; being alone too. The Lobster exaggerates something real: that "and you, when?" pressure turned into punishment, animal and nightmare.
The starting idea is excellent: if you do not find a partner within a fixed period, you are turned into the animal you have chosen. What unsettles is not only the rule, but how normally everyone accepts it. Choosing to become a lobster, dog or pony feels like ticking a form. The horror works because the system treats it like paperwork.
The hotel is a polite nightmare. Everything is regulated: desire, compatibility, sex, masturbation, conversations, dances and hunting loners. John C. Reilly's burned hand for masturbating sums up that cruel logic: break an intimate rule, receive physical punishment. Nobody seems scandalized.
The sexual test on David, with the maid rubbing against him to measure his reaction, is also brutal. There is nothing erotic about it; it is humiliating, mechanical and cold. The body becomes a file. What matters is whether he responds as expected.
Jessica Barden made me laugh and feel sorry for her. Once you recognize her as the crazy girl from The End of the F***ing World, you cannot unsee her. Here she has that mix of fragility, strangeness and danger that suits her very well. Her character clings to an absurd compatibility, like everyone else, because in that world any shared trait is worth more than a true emotion.
The blonde woman turned into a pony is also a ridiculous and very sad idea. From the outside, you think someone like that could easily find a partner, but that is exactly the cruel joke: beauty does not save you if you do not fit into the right box. A whole person is reduced to the bureaucratic consequence of not pairing up in time.
The suicide of the woman who jumps from the hotel window is very hard because of how cold it is. There is no great melodrama; there is failure, despair and an almost indifferent reaction. Even that feels like another consequence of protocol.
When David tries to pair up with the heartless woman, the film becomes more sinister. He pretends not to feel in order to survive, but discovers what it means to be with someone truly incapable of compassion. Her killing his brother and appearing with blood on her legs as if nothing had happened is grotesque. And when he is taken to the manager because he cried, the idea is clear: human pain matters less than the coherence of the profile.
The move to the forest is very intelligent because it does not turn the loners into the good ones. Escaping the hotel does not mean reaching freedom, but entering another dictatorship. On one side you are forced to have a partner; on the other you are forbidden to fall in love. Two opposite societies, but equally shameful: both turn an intimate decision into a collective rule.
Léa Seydoux works very well as the leader of that other authoritarianism. Her world seems rebellious, but it also punishes desire. Lanthimos does not stop at "society forces us to pair up"; he also criticizes the opposite rigidity, the idea that needing someone is a betrayal of independence.
The relationship between David and the short-sighted woman is beautiful inside the strangeness because it begins as an attempt to find something authentic amid absurd rules. But even there the film is cruel: they too need a shared characteristic to justify the bond. They have escaped the systems, but not the logic those systems have placed inside their heads.
That is why the ending seems so good and so sad to me. When he considers blinding himself because she has been blinded, the film pushes compulsory compatibility to its limit. The doubt over whether he dares, escapes or remains paralyzed in the bathroom is perfect. Her waiting in the restaurant makes everything more uncomfortable and human.
The second half feels less rounded to me than the hotel section, and I understand those who say the premise is stretched too far. Sometimes Lanthimos seems to enjoy his own device so much that the film becomes too cold. But that coldness is also part of its strength: it makes the absurd seem normal and the normal seem monstrous.
It did not remind me too much of Bugonia. There I saw more nerve, chaos and delirium; here everything is more geometric, deadpan and conceptual. But you can recognize shared obsessions: absurd rules, social violence, submitted bodies and characters trapped in systems that deform the human.
In the end, for me it remains a very original, uncomfortable and powerful satire about the obligation to have a partner and the opposite obligation not to need anyone. Having a partner should be a choice, not proof of normality; being alone too. The Lobster exaggerates something real: that "and you, when?" pressure turned into punishment, animal and nightmare.
Mini Review: I liked it quite a lot, although I understand how it could test your patience. It is strange, dry, uncomfortable and very Lanthimos: nobody speaks or reacts like a normal person, and yet that absurd world says recognizable things about couples, loneliness and pressure. The starting idea is excellent: if you do not find a partner within a fixed period, you are turned into the animal you have chosen. What unsettles is not only the rule, but how...
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