The Lobster

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos Yorgos Lanthimos

Overview

After his wife leaves him, David (Colin Farrell) is sent to a hotel for single adults and urged to find a new significant other within 45 days -- if he fails, he will be transformed into an animal of his choosing. David eventually meets a runaway from the hotel (Rachel Weisz), and the two begin a secret romance. L?a Seydoux, Jessica Barden, Olivia Colman, Ben Whishaw, and John C. Reilly co-star. This absurdist dystopian comedy is the first English-language feature from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, and was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

Product Details

Release Date:	08/02/2016
UPC:	0031398247401
Original Release:	2015
Rating:	R
Source:	LIONSGATE - 600000-AEC LGE
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround]
Language:	English
Time:	1:58:00
Sales rank:	37,839

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Colin Farrell	David,Actor
Rachel Weisz	Short Sighted Woman
Léa Seydoux	Loner Leader,Actor
Ben Whishaw	The Limping Man
John C. Reilly	Lisping Man
Olivia Colman	Hotel Manager
Jessica Barden	Nosebleed Woman
Angeliki Papoulia	Heartless Woman
Ashley Jensen	Biscuit Woman
Roger Ashton-Griffiths	Doctor
Michael Smiley	Loner Swimmer
Ariane Labed	The Maid
Rosanna Hoult	David's wife
Ewen MacIntosh	Trainer Waiter - Shooting Range
Jacqueline Abrahams	Donkey Shooter
Sean Duggan	Guard Waiter
Roland Ferrandi	Loner Leader's Father
Patrick Malone	Campari Man
Kevin McCormack	Police Officer 2
Garry Mountaine	Hotel Manager's Partner
Judi King Murphy	Guest Room 104
Laoise Murphy	Girl Child
Imelda Nagle Ryan	Loner Leader's Mother
Nancy Onu	Hotel Receptionist
Anthony Dougall	70 Year Old Waiter
James Finnegan	Bald Man
Robert Heaney	Restaurant Waiter
Kathy Kelly	Police Officer 1
Ishmael Moalosi	Bandaged Loner
Anthony Moriarty	30 Year Old Waiter
Matthew O'Brien	Trapped Loner
Emma O'Shea	Nosebleed Woman's Best Friend
Sandra Mason	Arrested Town Woman

Technical Credits

Yorgos Lanthimos

Efthymis Filippou

Yorgos Lanthimos	Director,Screenwriter,Producer
Efthymis Filippou	Screenwriter,Screenwriter
Ceci Dempsey	Producer
Ed Guiney	Producer
Lee Magiday	Producer
Sam Lavender	Executive Producer
Andrew Lowe	Executive Producer
Tessa Ross	Executive Producer
Johnnie Burn	Sound/Sound Designer
Giedrius Nagys	Stunts
Louise Kiely	Casting
Jina Jay	Casting
Wave Studios Amsterdam	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

Oscar-nominated champion of the surreal Yorgos Lanthimos reaches out to a broader audience with his first English-language feature, the fantastically weird and tremendously poignant The Lobster. The Greek director earned a nod from the Academy in 2011 for Dogtooth, his incest-tinged story of helicopter parenting, which was a small miracle considering it may have been the least commercially appealing film to ever be recognized with a nomination. He followed up Dogtooth with 2011's ALPS, a tale about a group of mentally unstable people who offer to impersonate the recently deceased as a coping mechanism for grieving families. The Lobster, a darling of last year's festival circuit, might be his most accomplished satire yet -- it's a career masterstroke drenched in the absurd. After being left by his wife, David (Colin Farrell) is sent to a hotel for single adults. Each closely monitored guest is given 45 days to find a significant other with whom they share a defining characteristic; if the 45 days run out without finding a match, that individual is transformed into an animal of their choosing (the title of the film being David's choice) and released into the wild. The hotel offers a number of coupling exercises like group meals, dances, and conversational calisthenics. Outside the grounds of the building live a guerilla group of singles known as Loners: They're societal outcasts and runaways from the program who live in the wilderness, where their leader (Léa Seydoux) enforces a strict set of rules (for one, love is officially outlawed). Every day, the guests at the hotel are armed with tranquilizer guns and organized into hunting parties as they trek into the woods to try to capture Loners -- each successful capture adds an additional day onto their time limit at the hotel. David befriends two fellow guests, an awkward lisper (John C. Reilly) and a man with a limp (Ben Whishaw), as the trio desperately attempt to find partners. The unimpressive, out-of-shape David is routinely humiliated during his search for a mate, and his transformation into a lobster seems all but inevitable. After a last-ditch effort to land a match goes awry, he's forced to escape into the wilderness to join the Loners. There, he falls in love with a woman (Rachel Weisz), but the pair must keep their romance a secret or face dire consequence. As ridiculous as this premise may sound, Lanthimos and longtime writing collaborator Efthimis Filippou spin a mesmerizing love story out of the pitch-black despondency of their absurd world. The Lobster is a not-so-subtle dig at modern romance, in which arbitrary qualities and common interests are used as the basis of left or right swipes on an app. In the film, traits like frequent nosebleeds or shortsightedness become the basis of marriages, and children are even supplied to potential couples to test the strength of their bond. It's a bleak and darkly hilarious riff on our own society's tedious constraints. Yet when the script is flipped to the Loners, Lanthimos doesn't let up on the satire. The Loners are just as rule-obsessed as the hotel staff, allowing the director to portray a civilization that views emotions only in black-and-white terms: Love is either something to be enforced or shunned completely, depending on one's relationship to the hotel. It all leads to a final act that is alternatively hopeful and crushing for viewers as they consider the chances for David's secret relationship. There's nothing lost in Lanthimos' trademark blunt dialogue during the transition from Greek to English. Audiences reading the subtitles for Dogtooth or ALPS may have felt like they were witnessing aliens imitating human language, and The Lobster summons up a similar feeling of off-kilter madness: The characters recite their lines with such brutal honesty it seems like they're being prompted by unseen cue cards, and the deadpan humor is as dry as can be. Lanthimos has the innate ability to peel back the layers of our own ridiculous social minutia, and he takes our intrinsic desire for companionship, filters it through a funhouse mirror, and reflects it back to us brilliantly in The Lobster.