FestBeat: Why you should see The Lobster and Tale of Tales (day 4)

Yesterday The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015) screened at Zawya. The demand for tickets was so high that they had to open a second screen and there still wasn’t a single seat left unoccupied. I think it was the most attended film in the Panorama thus far.

Tale of Tales (Matteo Farrome, 2015) also screened yesterday, but to a smaller audience. I really enjoyed watching the two back-to-back. It allowed me to see connections between them that I might not have noticed otherwise.

The grotesque, the nonsensical and the erotic. The Lobster and Tale of Tales are two films that masterfully create worlds where these three elements interplay to create a unique space for the viewer.

In The Lobster, there is a beautifully shot scene in which a character kills an animal and leaves it in a pool of blood to gauge whether she wants the main character to be her mate – mate in the sexual, crass, animal sense. Her match has to be someone who is as heartless as she is. In Tale of Tales, an old maiden asks to be flayed to get new, younger skin in the hopes of sleeping with a handsome king like her sister does.

A blend of disgust, deadpan existentialist laughter and enthralled fascination marks the experience of that unique space. Both films take us into the dark allies at the peripheries of “proper” behavior, beyond the reach of rules of society. They respond to that desire we have when we feel we love someone so much we want to eat them, or when a cat is so cute that you just want to put it in your mouth.

The world of The Lobster is one in which the police stop you if they suspect that you might be single. Divorcees are transported to a hotel where they are given 45 days to find a new mate. In order to increase their days there, hence their chances of finding a mate, they go on hunts where they have to kill other singletons in a forest. In our current world, with social pressures to couple up and get married and dating sites where algorithms choose potential mates for you, the world of The Lobster doesn't seem that far fetched.

In my opinion, what is bared at the junction between the erotic, the grotesque and the absurd are the categories and meanings we have for making sense of the world and disciplining our behavior to fit into society. The space between these three elements is a fertile ground for exploring, subverting even, our socially constructed ideas of acceptability, of what's rational and normal.

We laugh in The Lobster when David (Colin Farrell) and his love interest (a nameless woman played by Rachel Weisz) start smooching too boldly in the presence of a friend’s parents just inches away. In Tale of Tales, the audience burst laughing when the camera shows a pet flea. The reason, of course, is that we know fleas are never that big and cannot be pets. The films plays with what we think is possible and acceptable in the world to give us moments where our preconceived, socially constructed, ideas about the world become revealed to us, available for our scrutiny.

The type of humor that comes out of this unique space or junction is rare in Egyptian cinema. I wish we could see more of it.

The Lobster and Tale of Tales might not be your cup of tea, but they're both worth seeing. For the gorgeous images if nothing else. The Lobster screens again on Friday December 7 and Tale of Tales on Monday November 30.

The Panorama of the European Film screens through December 5. See the full program here and our brief guide here.