JOIN USIt may often be seen as an unenviable state, with countless Hollywood films dedicated to finding love and settling down. But the single life is in fact romantic, actress Rachel Weisz has argued, as she says finding love can be “incredibly hard” and narcissistic.
Weisz, who is married to James Bond actor Daniel Craig, said there was “something about loneliness” that made it romantic, leaving someone searching for love in the unknown.
Longing for romance
She is currently starring in The Lobster, a film in which single people are compelled to stay in a bespoke hotel which will see them turned into animals if they do not find a well-suited mate within 45 days.
The film, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, sees her play a wood-dwelling loner, who must pretend to be in a couple in public to prevent catastrophe. Appearing in Cannes, Weisz joined her co-stars Colin Farrell and British author Ben Whishaw, as each admitted they still had “no clue” what the film’s message truly was.
“I’ve met a number of people who have seen the film, and they all seem to interpret it differently,” said Weisz, who has been married to Craig for four years and has one child.
“To me, the first thing it makes me think about is narcissism; that in the story you have to fall in love with somebody who has similar qualities to yourself. I think often love can be a bit narcissistic. That’s my first impression, but everyone has a different interpretation.”
Expanding on the film’s plot, which sees single people as firmly lesser — even law-breaking — beings, the actress said, “I think if something is about loneliness, it’s necessarily about being romantic. Because when you’re lonely, you’re probably searching — or at least Colin’s character — is searching for love.”
“So I’m going to say it’s a very, very romantic film, in the old-fashioned sense of the word Romantic with a capital R. It’s the pursuit for love and happiness and togetherness which is incredibly hard. In this Lanthimos (the director’s) universe, it’s especially hard to find love.”
A strong message
She did, however, disagree that there is too much pressure to be in a couple in modern society, denying that was the clear message of the film.
The film, she said, was expressing “very true, deep things” about the world, which could be a “cruel, brutal place but is full of love”.
Farrell plays the lead character, forced into the hotel after a break-up, in a film inspired in part by British reality television series The Hotel, narrated by Hugh Bonneville.
The show, which ran for four series, provided a fly-on-the-wall look at real hotels and B&Bs across the country, with The Lobster director Yorgos Lanthimos admitted watching the show had provoked the gem of his story.
Farrell, who said he had “no clue” about the message of the final film, said he had taken away a sense of “the deep loneliness that permeates”.
He added he believed that worries of being alone had been exploited in the modern day, by “products or governments or religions” who tuned into “a human being’s fear of their aloneness”.