Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos has raised a cult following with his ingeniously quirky satires. His first English-language feature, which opens in French cinemas on Wednesday, is likely to draw new fans and perhaps frustrate old ones.

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Ahead of this year’s Cannes Festival, which saw Lanthimos win the third-place Jury Prize, director Thierry Frémaux had described “The Lobster” as “the kind of film one doesn’t fully understand” – seemingly suggesting we’d get little or none of it. The legion of film critics that gathered on the French Riviera were then greeted by bizarre fliers featuring an obscure dialogue between “the short-sighted man” and “the man with a limp”. As the mystery grew, so did the excitement among the swelling ranks of Lanthimos buffs.

In the end, “The Lobster” proved to be brilliant and often hilarious, but not nearly as cryptic as expected. It is a relatively straightforward satire of society’s obsession with couples, set in a dystopian world in which the single are arrested and sent to a hotel where they have 45 days to find a partner or else be turned into an animal of their choice. The premise is that monogamous relationships are what distinguish us from beasts. Those who fail to find a partner are therefore unworthy of the human race.

The hotel has strict rules, reflecting a society of uncompromising order, where conformity is primordial. Homosexuals are tolerated, but not bisexuals. Couples can play tennis, but the single are only allowed golf or squash. Male bachelors are routinely aroused by waitresses to ensure they still get erections, and then left aching for more. Those caught masturbating are publicly shamed and forced to put their hands in a toaster.

The guests each have a “defining characteristic” – a limp, a lisp or a passion for biscuits – and are trained to look for partners with the same trait. Most do so spontaneously, suggesting the social conditioning has had a profound impact. Others feign a matching characteristic in order to save their skin. Thus one man secretly bangs his head against tables and walls to court a young lady who is prone to nose bleeds.

Black comedy

Unlike Lanthimos’s previous low-budget, Greek-language movies, “The Lobster” is packed with international stars including Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly, Léa Seydoux and Colin Farrell, who plays the film’s protagonist David. Farrell’s mild-mannered, deadpan performance fits in perfectly with the hotel’s elegantly eccentric environment. Forget the manly playboy. Here is a lonely guy with nerdy glasses and a paunch who’s been dumped by his wife. If things turn out badly for him, his wish is to be turned into a lobster, because he loves the sea and lobsters live to be over one 100.

As his deadline nears, David escapes from the hotel and joins a group of renegade “loners” in a forest. They turn out to be just as intolerant as the hotel managers. Amorous liaisons are strictly forbidden and those caught kissing have their lips cut off. The loners’ dour, ruthless chieftain (Seydoux) leads them on raids against the hotel, designed to prove to couples that their relationships are founded on lies and deceit.

From left to right: John C. Reilly, Rachel Weisz, Angeliki Papoulia, Léa Seydoux, Ariane Labed, Yorgos Lanthimos and Colin Farrell at the Cannes photo call for "The Lobster".

The film is teeming with Lanthimos’s trademark dark, absurdist humour, but less subtle, captivating and emotionally involving than his 2008 masterpiece “Dogtooth”. While the hotel scenes confirm the director’s mastery of closed, oppressive environments, the forest part is less disciplined. The ample use of voiceovers to explain what is happening also feels distracting and unnecessary, as though it were a ploy to make the film more accessible to a broader, English-speaking audience.

Admittedly, much of this is nitpicking. That one should be looking for flaws in ‘The Lobster’ is a measure of the expectation generated by the Greek director. For all its shortcomings, his latest work is another brilliantly weird piece of black comedy. I can’t wait to find out how the Lanthimos touch will apply to his next subject: political intrigue during the reign of Queen Anne.

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An earlier version of this article was published in May during the Cannes Film Festival.



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