The Lobster (2015) ****

This dark arthouse drama about a society where love is mandatory was surprising and absolutely riveting. In its peculiar tone and mysterious concept, it reminds me very much of Under The Skin, especially since it also appears to have been shot in Scotland. Intriguing from the start, the strange script, despite the outlandish ideas it contains, is surprisingly comprehensive and easy to follow.

The unsettling and ominous atmosphere of the film is created not only be the slightly out-of-tune score, bleak colour palette and cruel concepts, but mostly by the deliberately wooden and dead-eyes delivery of oddly flat dialogue. The actors were obviously asked not to display emotion – or maybe display the opposite of the expected emotion – and I imagine delivering all their lines with little to no inflection must have been very challenging. Yet there were only a few slip-ups. It mostly sounded like someone was haltingly reading a book that they felt no emotional engagement for.

After a while, what was a creepy dystopia almost turned into a full-blown horror film, complete with animal cruelty, murder and maiming. One of the main questions of the film was probably how people can be required to be in love if they are fundamentally so utterly emotionless and uncaring about each other.

The actors did a great job at bringing this paradoxical script to the screen with all around great acting. Collin Farrell impressed with a consistent character performance, portraying a man that seems not quite as dead inside as the rest of the population. Still, his struggles and traumas stay hidden under a studied layer of indifference. Rachel Weisz is great as ever as his love interest, but I particularly enjoyed Olivia Coleman’s disturbingly passive-aggressive portrayal of the “hotel manager”, and Léa Sydoux as the practical but heartless leader of the Loners.

The film was well-made and clearly shot on location in Scotland (it looked like the Isle of Skye to me, but might have been another island). The visual composition stayed minimal and stuck to a grey-green-blue colour palette that made everything look sad, even the gorgeous nature locations. The directing and editing were flawless. Lighting appears to have been mostly natural and the overcast sky aided the washed-out, almost corps-like look of the characters as they struggled through their painful, often hopeless existence trying to conform to rigid social norms.

All in all, a thought-provoking, disturbing parable about societal expectations and how they interfere with the life of the individual. This may warrant a second viewing to catch all of the metaphors and the deeper meaning of certain story elements. Yet I’m not sure I want to sit through this unsettling, distinctly uncomfortable experience again. 4/5