Romances don’t get much more unusual than ‘The Lobster,’ starring Farrell, Weisz

TORONTO – Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest film, “The Lobster,” is a vicious, strange satire.

It’s about a world where single people are herded into a hotel and forced to find a mate within a prescribed period of time — with failure resulting in transmogrification into an animal.

Imagine pitching that to chequebook-guarding producers.

“I guess not all people got it because it was difficult to put the financing together,” Lanthimos said with a weary smile during September’s Toronto International FIlm Festival, where the film debuted.

“Films and screenplays that appear to be different and don’t really fit in a box — and cannot be described as one of the genres that people are aware of — they make people uncomfortable.

“So it’s hard to convince them to invest in them — but it was not like that with the creative people involved.”

That number of curious creatives included Colin Farrell, who stars as a recent divorcee who pursues a partner with the sort of dogged determination befitting someone who doesn’t want to be turned into the titular crustacean.

Among the other doomed singles he mingles with are John C. Reilly as a floundering man identified only by his lisp, and Angeliki Papoulia as a remorseless killer.

The only way to extend one’s stay in the hotel is to hunt through the woods for escaped singles, with each kill affording more days to search for a suitable partner.

Eventually, Farrell’s frustrated bachelor heads for the forest, and that’s where he meets his forbidden love interest: Rachel Weisz’s survivor, known only for her near-sightedness.

For what it’s worth, Weisz immediately understood Lanthimos’s eccentric vision.

“It’s just very, very unusual,” she said during the Toronto festival. “It’s not really like anything. You don’t really compare it to anything.

“Yorgos really creates his own universe. I think I every time I see it, I notice something new about it.

“I love it.”

Love is, of course, the topic at hand — or at least the complicated rituals we engage in to find it.

“The Lobster” emphasizes the inherent absurdity of selecting a mate based on the slightest instances of shared experience, with couples insisting on a deep connection over their mutual love of biscuits or trouble with nosebleeds.

But he and Weisz argue that the eccentric film isn’t necessarily cynical.

“I think the film is romantic, but you know, it definitely doesn’t shy away from the cruelty of people and relationships and society and … how we structure our relationships within this world,” said Lanthimos, the director of “Alps” and “Dogtooth.”

“It’s very romantic,” agreed Weisz. “To me, I guess, it’s more about how we live in a rule-bound world…. It’s about, with all these rules, (the fact) that two people could possibly find their own love.”

In fact, there’s a certain sweetness to Weisz and Farrell’s stilted courtship, even if it exists in a film prone to sudden bursts of violence and cruelty.

Weisz and Farrell didn’t know each other prior to working on the film, but their bond was real.

“I just loved working with him,” Weisz enthused. “He’s incredibly funny, and has a very, very hungry intellect and mind and he’s very warm and immensely soulful. He was a wonderful dance partner.”