NEW YORK — Relaxing in an armchair at the posh Baccarat Hotel in midtown Manhattan, Colin Farrell looks movie-star chic in a dark, dapper suit that accentuates his lithe physique. It’s a far cry from the paunchy “dad bod’’ Farrell sported to play tortured cop Ray Velcoro on HBO’s “True Detective’’ last year and the schlubby David in his new film “The Lobster,’’ which opens in Boston on Friday.
Extreme weight fluctuations are common among actors trying to bag Oscars. But while Matthew McConaughey, Christian Bale, and Jake Gyllenhaal famously slimmed down for awards-baiting roles, Colin Farrell packed on 45 pounds in about eight weeks, gorging on pizza, chocolate cake, and melted tubs of ice cream.
“You mess around with the body a bit,’’ Farrell says of being a Hollywood leading man. “But with [‘The Lobster’] the target was softer than it’s ever been. It was a different method. Usually in the past it involved lifting weights or some kind of deprivation. But this was the other way around. This was sedentary and saturation.’’
Despite being able to indulge in fried foods and cheeseburgers for breakfast, “It was only fun for about two days,’’ Farrell reveals. “Then it was a drag. It was harder putting the weight on than losing it, strangely enough.’’
Strange and surreal are hallmarks of “The Lobster,’’ director Yorgos Lanthimos’s first English-language film, which won the jury prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. In this satirical fable set in an absurdist, dystopian world, Farrell plays the bespectacled, mustachioed David, who’s recently been dumped by his wife. David’s newly single status forces him to check into the enigmatic Hotel, where he’ll have 45 days to find true love with a new partner or else be transformed into an animal of his choice and released into the woods.
In this society of enforced monogamy, you must couple up or suffer the consequences. During his stay, David befriends two other lost souls, one with a lisp (John C. Reilly) and another suffering from a slight limp (Ben Whishaw), who seek out mates with surface commonalities and resort to deception to find love when necessary.
The film grew out of a discussion between Lanthimos and his co-writer Efthimis Filippou about the social pressure people feel to be in a relationship and make it work, and how society views people who fail in their quest. “What are we prepared to do to find love? And how can you know if it’s true?’’ wonders Lanthimos, who’s seated next to Farrell.
“For me, the film concerns the nature of aloneness and our desire as a feeling, breathing, thinking, sentient race to have somebody to share our lives with,’’ says Farrell, “sometimes just because that’s a sweet thought and a beautiful thing, and sometimes because we are conditioned to rush towards that, and sometimes because we’re afraid of our aloneness, and sometimes all of the above.’’
Before long, David chafes at the repression and rules of the Hotel and makes a daring escape into the forest, where he joins The Loners, a group of rebels who completely reject romance. Relationships and even flirting are forbidden. But when David meets a similarly short-sighted loner (Rachel Weisz) and sparks fly between them, they risk punishment (and worse) from their dogmatic leader (Lea Seydoux).
David learns that the forest is an equally constricting society. “The rules might be the exact opposite, but one is just as oppressive as the other,’’ Lanthimos says.
Films with menacing, magic-realistic settings and characters sticking to rigid codes and parameters are Lanthimos’s stock in trade. His chilling 2010 film “Dogtooth,’’ which garnered an Oscar nomination, centered on an isolated family whose patriarch keeps them cloistered in a compound behind prison-like walls, ignorant of the outside world.
Farrell remembers seeing “Dogtooth’’ with his sister at a theater in Philadelphia. Afterwards, they sat in the parking lot, awestruck. “It was really harrowing and perturbing, and it stayed with me.’’
Despite its surreal setup, “The Lobster’’ functions as an allegorical reflection of our own society, underlined by mordant humor. “It’s pretty close to reality. It’s just the details that are enhanced, and there are maybe a more strict set of rules,’’ Lanthimos says. “So when you push those rules and social codes to the extreme and then you observe it from afar, more of the absurdities are revealed.’’
For Farrell, “The Lobster’’ grapples with “the power of choice and the vacuum that’s created when people think they have no choice. Those vacuums are filled by church and state and by the political or social systems, which maybe we’re not even aware of living under.’’
Adds Lanthimos, “We are born into a world that is structured in a certain way, we are educated in it, and we get used to a certain way of life, so I think it’s healthy to question those things every now and then.’’
Christopher Wallenberg can be reached at chriswallenberg@gmail.com.
