The Lobster begins with a blind woman reminiscing about the past. Her tale is of an antiutopian world in which people without romantic partners are arrested and detained for forty-five days in a place called The Hotel; those who fail to find a partner within that time period are turned into beasts and hunted. A desperate man escapes The Hotel and flees to The Woods, where The Loners live. There, he falls in love, which violates the rules of The Loners. The fourth feature by Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, The Lobster is a dystopian love story full of individuality, ingenuity, and creativity. In it, he posits people in relationships on one axis and those who are single on another, as antipodes. Both axes are conventionalized and exaggerated, so neither is perfect. Such a construct forces us to confront the agony of Man, who wanders around, bewildered. The ending of the film imparts a strong afterimage by gesturing toward the limits and futility of so-called love, thus plainly showing the hypocrisy of it. (RHEE Soue-won)