Disclaimer: This article contains a few spoilers for the movie "The Lobster."

In the words of French playwright Antonin Artaud, "cinema implies a total inversion of values, a complete upheaval of optics, of perspective and logic. It is more exciting than phosphorus, more captivating than love."

Yorgos Lanthimos’ "The Lobster" is an embodiment of this idea, as its daring premise and riveting, semi-dystopian setting take the viewer through a cinematic marvel of a ride. It offers a satirical social commentary and ultimately presents the question, how different is this fictitious view from our current generalized perspective of romantic partnerships?

The general premise of the film introduces a semi-futuristic alternate reality, in which by law single people are checked into a hotel where they are forced to find a suitable mate in 45 days. Otherwise they’ll be surgically turned into an animal of their choice and released into the wilderness.

Shrewdly, these elements create a sense of desperate craving for a romantic bond that may or may not be genuine due to the circumstances. For example, an unnamed character -- primarily known for eating biscuits -- offers protagonist David diverse sexual favors, in an attempt to establish a connection with him a few days before her 45-day stay at the hotel expires. This draws a parallel with the modern sentiment of the importance of being in a relationship and the status it carries in today’s society. Moreover, it also reflects on the measures and the distance we are willing to reach in order to attain that status, while also offering a distorted view on how loneliness can revert us to a more primal state.

The setting inspires a very systematic and synthetic view of personal image and relationships in general. During assemblies, the guests introduce themselves to prospective partners and are forced to describe a trait that characterizes them. Quickly, one of the characters, Rob, takes advantage of this by faking nosebleeds in order to match another guest’s trait and establish a relationship based solely on this. A slight comparison to dating websites or apps, where matches are primarily categorized by single, and sometimes trivial, common interests with ease, in some cases leading to frivolous interactions. In this same example the film criticizes the “chameleon” aspect of some relationships, where a person mimics the other’s interests in order to desperately have an enhanced, artificial appeal, which highlights a more pertinent notion of the value of being another’s complement rather than a mirror image.

Around the halfway mark, the film introduces another radical point of view, one perceived by “the loners.” This group is composed of “fugitives” who are living by themselves out in the woods while being hunted by the people in the hotel. Getting a day extension for every “loner” they capture is what incentivizes the guests at the hotel to hunt the runaways down. This notion represents society’s view of being single and its approach that tends to systematically wear down single individuals by ganging up on them through the misconception that solitude has a negative connotation.

In conclusion, "The Lobster" is a fantastic achievement in various cinematic departments, but where it truly shines is in its critique and satirical representation of society’s take on romantic relationships. It achieves this by using its eccentric premise and slick dystopian setting to point out the flaws in said vision. The movie triumphs as a more-than-successful English debut for Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos.