Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Year Released: 2015
Rating: 3.5
In some perverse alternative-reality scenario, single people (particularly Colin Ferrell, John C. Reilly and Ben Whishaw) are sent to a place called "The Hotel" in order to find a suitable partner in 45 days or else be turned into an animal of their choosing (!); when not following draconian laws regarding self-pleasure, the singles are armed with tranquilizer guns and taken into the woods to hunt down loners. While it may not pass any feasible test of Real-World Logic or Applicable Psychology, I don't think Lanthimos cares a whit about any of that: he's more or less concerned with societal perceptions of the nature of relationships (people will do ridiculous things when 'single' to attract a mate, including fake nose bleeds and, in Farrell's case, pretend to be sociopathic), how 'singles' still feel inclined to lie to their parents (even the hardened Léa Seydoux character 'puts on an act' for her family) and concluding on its most extreme deduction that a 'healthy' committed relationship involves (literal/figurative) 'blindness' (yikes!). If you like black comedies, they rarely come darker than this: it's one of the most pessimistic movies about romance I've seen in as long as I can remember ... and far more insidious than Noé's Love.
