The Lobster

The first film Yorgos Lanthimos made in English. Hotel passages were shot at the Parknasilla resort in County Kerry, city passages in Dublin. Jason Clarke had the lead first and left over the Everest schedule, which brought in Colin Farrell. The halves mirror each other, which sets the right expectation. Hotel guests have forty five days to find a partner and can buy extra days by hunting the single people in the forest with tranquiliser rifles, one day per capture. When David escapes and joins those loners, the rules invert: out there any romance is punished with mutilation. The same machinery runs forwards, then backwards. The performance style is a decision too: Lanthimos writes scripts with no description of what characters feel, and lines are spoken without stress. He asked Farrell to put on weight so David would look like a man settled into a long comfortable life. The transformation into an animal is never once shown; every change happens off camera. It took the Jury Prize at Cannes and an original screenplay Oscar nomination, on a budget near four million dollars. A good fit if you want a rule built carefully, then inverted with the same coldness. Not for a viewer who needs the decision made on screen: the film cuts away as David raises the knife.