Love and other demons
There is no in-between in the sterile world of Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster, only the definite resolve, strictly imposed to individuals, to ascribe to aloneness or companionship. There is no room for hesitation. You cannot be a bisexual — you can either be a homosexual or heterosexual. Shoes don’t have half sizes. And more importantly, you cannot spend your entire life without someone else. Everyone, at least in The City either has a husband or a wife. Loners — recently divorced, widowed, or just perpetually lonely — are given 45 days in a hotel to find the perfect significant other. If they fail to do so, they will be turned into an animal of their choice.
The Lobster spends its first half expressing its disdain of singlehood. Like any other dystopian future, rules exist to smoothen out the system and regulate the behavior of its inhabitants. Loners are subjected to a play depicting the perils of being alone (for an old man, death by choking without someone to administer the Heimlich maneuver on you is a definite probability while for women, the play asserts that they are more likely to be raped while walking on a sketchy street if they are without a male companion). Masturbation is strictly prohibited although solicited sex is strongly encouraged. “Life is easier when there are two of something instead of just one,” the hotel manager tells David (Colin Farrell), the titular animal who finds himself scrambling for love after his 12-year marriage falls apart.
The rules of compatibility as determined by The Lobster can seem as arbitrary as a “match” conducted via algorithms. There is always a defining characteristic that sets off a possible affair: it can be a random tendency to nosebleed, a lethal sense of apathy, or as simple as shortsightedness. By the second act, set in a forest inhabited by a pack of loners who has disavowed passionate companionship, the film robs the titillating thrills of erotic expression — kissing, sexual intercourse and flirting — by turning them into acts of self-destruction.
The Lobster upholds society’s obsession with coupling in many ways. Single men and women are persecuted, though passive-aggressively (Valentine’s Day being a prime example) and apps that encourage dating are in constant supply to a population that demands it. We have been raised to think that the most basic unit of a community is the family — a strong suggestion that is reinforced by the cardinal values that we have been hardwired with, growing up. Lanthimos, like the set-ups of his previous films Dogtooth and Alps, evokes a world through picturesque yet hermetically sealed landscapes, where terrible extremes are committed in the name of romantic connections, though in this case, devoid of genuine emotion.
More than a generic boy-meets-girl tale
Hong Sang Soo’s Right Now, Wrong Then is a structural opposite of Lanthimos’s exercise in ideological terrorism. Hong’s bifurcated tale of a wintry romance tells the same story twice, although with different outcomes stemming from an initial encounter. On paper, this affair sounds as everyday as any generic tale of love — also, more or less, the crux of Hong’s films: a director meets a lonesome painter while spending time in a cold South Korean town. It may be deceptively simple but Hong offers up his own rhythms of an otherwise generic boy-meets-girl tale.
The two-fold telling affords the two characters, Cheon-soo and Hee-jong, to process their meeting with two probable outcomes. The director, enamored by Hee-jong, can either come out as a deceptive prick or an awkward but honest charmer. On the other hand, Hee-jong could either open up to Cheon-soo as they drunkenly spend an evening together or take heed and investigate the more intricate details of his personality; peculiarities that give away his true persona.
As the story unfolds, it is fascinating how Hong deconstructs the primal elements of human interactions — the choices of words, slights of touch and glances — that lead to a possible romantic reciprocity. In each iteration, we are presented with the unyielding power of honesty, with its capacity to destroy or, in the instance of its manifestation (as in Cheon-soo’s soju-filled marriage proposal to Hee-jong in the second tale), turn it as an opportunity for a clear-headed analysis of the events. “Thank you for allowing me to have these feelings,” Cheon-soo tells Hee-jong after another drunken confession of admiration. A knowing look in Hee-jong’s eyes hint at a heart warmed by such tender devotion but she is smart enough to know that this is merely transitory.
Though Cheon-soo and Hee-jong’s affair might have only occurred at such a brief time, Right Now, Wrong Then supposes that there are moments in our lives that can hold unknown pleasures, no matter how ordinary or mundane. There is no great love here, only an instance for two lonely people to have a fleeting experience of what it is to be loved and be loved.
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Right Now, Wrong Then may be deceptively simple, but South Korean director Hong Sang Soo offers up his own rhythms of an otherwise generic boy-meets-girl tale.
