The Lobster: Eine unkonventionelle Liebesgeschichte (2015)

The Lobster: Eine unkonventionelle Liebesgeschichte: Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. With Jacqueline Abrahams, Roger Ashton-Griffiths, Jessica Barden, Olivia Colman. In a dystopian near future, single people, according to the laws of The City, are taken to The Hotel, where they are obliged to find a romantic partner in forty-five days or are transformed into beasts and sent off into The Woods.

“u0026quot;The Lobsteru0026quot; takes the tropes and expectations of modern-day relationships and satirises them almost out of existence. The farcical u0026quot;Hotelu0026quot; aims to partner u0026#39;loneru0026#39; humans with each other (based on 1 characteristic) in a stress-inducing timeframe of 45 days, often resulting in deception and the suppression of true feelings in order to garner a relationship as a means of escape. The other side of the coin is the outcast tribe living a meagre existence in the woods, where even flirting is punished with physical mutilation. The cold mechanical delivery of every single characteru0026#39;s lines emphasises the absurdity of the situation, and bizarrely makes the jokes even funnier. Not since Richard Ayoadeu0026#39;s u0026quot;The Doubleu0026quot; has cripplingly awkward humour been so effective. This film has a lot to say about the fickle nature of relationships, set against the background of a dystopian society. The cinematography is as flat as the actorsu0026#39; delivery; this contributes to the emotionally-stunted, often silent world that the characters inhabit. The ending is beautifully ambiguous and surprisingly tense for such an understated scene. A score which fluctuates from terse, rough string melodies to Italian opera heightens the sense of weird-art-film which pervades u0026quot;The Lobsteru0026quot;: definitely a film which requires full attention, reflection, and a mind open to arty weirdness, u0026quot;The Lobsteru0026quot; is a remarkable oddity.”