The Lobster

Trailers for "The Lobster," Yorgos Lanthimos' first english-language feature, sell it as a dramedy in the tradition of Charlie Kaufman or Spike Jonze - twee bubbles of love and happiness, the bumbling of a nueroses-arrested adulthood, and the existential void that follows the inevitable rupture. The parallels are obvious: the stilted, dead-pan delivery; the wide-eyed weirdness of romance; Colin Farrell's push-broom pedo-stache � la Joaquin Pheonix in "Her."

In less daring hands, a movie with promotional material that promises a "wickedly funny romance" set against the surrealistic, quasi-sci-fi dystopia of a population under the gun of transmogrification - single people who can't find a partner within forty-five days are turned into animals, a premise rife for the stop-motion play-sets of Michel Gondry, say, or Wes Anderson - might have been too precious to stomach.

But Lanthimos, directing his own script, has a firm hand on the rudder, and he veers the film immediately into dark water. The first scene concerns the inexplicable execution of a donkey, and if you're squeamish about violence against animals, consider this your trigger warning. The fact that the actors often don't wear make-up and are shot mostly in natural light keeps the tone stark; the score, morose violins sporadically ramping to the swing and screech of a pendulous guillotine, rankles your nerves but fails to anticipate the next outburst of violence. John C. Rielly with a lisp is your cue to laugh, but, like all the humor in the film, you'll feel cruel for it.

It's hard to recommend a film like "The Lobster," mostly because it's so dead-set against the catharsis that writers like Kaufman championed in the late aughts. For Kaufman, there was hope for the meek, in spite of the society that apologizes for and even nourishes flaws of character; it's apparent in a relatively simple film like "Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind," but I think it's even true for a film as morally-complicated as "Being John Malkovich"- The Lobster seems utterly nihilistic by comparison.

But actually, "The Lobster" has grown on me. As Colin Farrell says in the sole special feature on the Blu-ray, "The Fabric of Attraction: Concocting The Lobster": "What Yorgos and [co-writer] Efthemis do... is they create a very complete world that operates under a very specific set of rules, and those rules, for me, are beyond the reproach of the audience." In that way, I've come to think of "The Lobster" as akin to a Picasso: the components make sense, adhere to some kind of logic, but the whole is bent and disjointed like a question mark - purposefully, intentionally ant-cathartic.

Moreover, I think "The Lobster" signals a current against an aesthetic that critics have identified as "New Sincerity" - the life-affirming break with the post-modern ironic detachment that's basically been de rigueur since 9/11, culminating in cutesy earbud-sharing and throwback mix-tapes en masse. No such thing can exist in the world of "The Lobster." It doesn't struggle with preserving innocence against the encroachment of a cynical adulthood; "The Lobster" recognizes that adulthood is struggle, and innocence gets you eaten.

The Lobster
Blu-ray + Digital HD
http://www.lionsgateshop.com
$24.99