The Lobster

The Lobster is a 2015 film directed by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos in his English language feature film debut. Set in a dystopian near-future, the film tells the story of a city where singles are given 45 days to find a romantic partner before they are turned into an animal. It stars Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, and Léa Seydoux. The film is internationally co-produced by companies from Ireland, the United Kingdom, Greece, France and the Netherlands.

It was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival and won the Jury Prize. It was shown in the Special Presentations section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

Plot

According to the rules of The City, single people are taken to The Hotel where they are given 45 days to find a partner. Those who fail are turned into an animal of their choice and released into the forest. Masturbation is banned but sexual stimulation by the hotel maid, without orgasm, is mandatory. The guests attend dances and watch propaganda extolling the virtues of partnership. They can extend their stay by hunting escapees, The Loners, with tranquillizer guns in The Woods. Each captured Loner affords an extra day to find a partner.

Lobster

Clawed lobsters comprise a family (Nephropidae, sometimes also Homaridae) of large marine crustaceans.

They have long bodies with muscular tails, and live in crevices or burrows on the sea floor. Three of their five pairs of legs have claws, including the first pair, which are usually much larger than the others. Highly prized as seafood, lobsters are economically important, and are often one of the most profitable commodities in coastal areas they populate. Commercially important species include two species of Homarus from the northern Atlantic Ocean, and scampi – the Northern Hemisphere genus Nephrops and the Southern Hemisphere genus Metanephrops. Although several other groups of crustaceans have the word "lobster" in their names, the unqualified term "lobster" generally refers to the clawed lobsters of the family Nephropidae. Clawed lobsters are not closely related to spiny lobsters or slipper lobsters, which have no claws (chelae), or to squat lobsters. The closest living relatives of clawed lobsters are the reef lobsters and the three families of freshwater crayfish.

Lobster (magazine)

Lobster is a magazine that is interested primarily in the influence of intelligence and security services on politics and world trade, what it calls deep politics or parapolitics. It combines the examination of conspiracy theories and contemporary history.Lobster is edited and published in the United Kingdom and has appeared twice a year for 32 years, at first in 16-page A5 format, then as an A4 magazine. Operating on a shoestring, its distinguished contributors include academics and others. Since 2009 it is distributed as a free downloadable PDF document.

According to the Hull Daily Mail, Lobster 'investigates government conspiracies, state espionage and the secret service.' In 1986 the magazine scooped mainstream media by uncovering the secret Clockwork Orange operation, implicated in trying to destabilise the British government. Colin Wallace, a former Northern Ireland army intelligence officer described how he had been instructed to smear leading UK politicians. Questions were asked in the House of Commons and an extended scandal ensued.

Lobster (novel)

Lobster is a novella written by Guillaume Lecasble, translated by Poly McLean and published in the UK by Dedalus Books in 2005.

Reception

The novel received positive reviews in the press. Nicholas Lezard, in The Guardian, enjoyed Lobster, concluding "There was a Lobster-shaped hole in world literature which has now been neatly filled by this remarkable work.".

In The Daily Telegraph, Sam Leith recommended it in a list of 'Mad Stuff'.

In Kirkus Reviews, the novel received a positive review which recommended it as a "brief, bizarre, boiling broth of surrealism, romantic fatalism and slapstick."

Publisher's Weekly also enjoyed the novel, calling it "both tender and appalling".

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