Can rules and regulations ever be avoided?

Rating: Null/10 (10 December 2015)

Set in an alternative reality in which unmarried individuals have 45 days to find a partner or be transformed into an animal, a jilted middle aged man flees to join some outlaws, only to find that they live by an equally rigid code. With such an offbeat premise, 'The Lobster' is always clearly a satire and the film cleverly mocks the way contemporary societies function. The unmarried individuals, for example, have to find a partner with a 'deficiency' in common (like the way dating services work), and they are subjected to spelled out lecturers in which the benefits of being in a relationship are driven home - to avoid rape, choking death when eating, etc. The film is incredibly funny at times too with Colin Farrell giving an excellent deadpan performance, pretending to be uncaring of a suicide at one point to seem as heartless as a prospective partner to-be. Rachel Weisz also has a superb turn late in the piece. With such an outlandish story though, the film unavoidably leaves open unanswered questions. Where does the child suddenly appear from? How can a society properly function where individuals cannot be separate from partners (what about those mall cops?). The film's take on the coupled society in which we live is sharp enough though for make any such issues a secondary concern. There does indeed something amiss with the way people tend to bounce almost immediately from relationship to another in the world in which we live, and certainly it is easy to imagine some of the rituals of our society seeming just as bizarre to the characters in the alternative reality of this film.