The Lobster · written by Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou · 2015

Heartless Woman fakes choking on a cherry while David does not react; she stops the act and declares they are a match.

Scene 52 of 123 · ≈ 1 min on screen · Act two

Midpoint
Save the Cat: Midpoint
David
Heartless Woman

Act oneAct two

Begins 41 min into a 1:28 film

The story so farBefore scene 52

After his wife leaves him, David has 45 days to find a partner at a hotel or become an animal; he escapes, falls for a shortsighted loner, and must decide whether to surrender his sight so they can stay together.

Scenes 1–15
David moves from his broken home into the hotel, where couplehood is imposed as the norm.
Scenes 16–24
He must find a partner before the 45-day limit turns him into an animal.
Scene 25
David loads a tranquilliser gun and joins the hotel’s hunt, entering its violent courtship system.
Just before
Scene 49
David watches a couple play basketball as the narrator recounts how she escaped the hotel after killing two people.
Scene 50
Biscuit Woman lies injured after jumping; David hides his distress and pretends to be indifferent when Heartless Woman asks what happened.
Scene 51
David replays Biscuit Woman’s final phone message, listening with visible regret as Bob wanders away.
Scene 52
This scene

52INT. BALLROOM - EVENING

Heartless Woman sits alone at a table. David goes up to her. He now seems confident.

DAVID

May I join you?

Heartless Woman looks at him and doesn’t answer right away.

HEARTLESS WOMAN

I don’t care. Sit if you like.

Heartless Woman looks at him. They don’t talk, they just watch the other couples dancing on the dance floor. He takes his jacket off and stirs the ice cubes in his glass with his index finger. She takes a cherry from a bowl and pops it in her mouth. She chokes. Her face turns red. She slumps over the table and her body jolts about in the chair. David does not react. After a while she stops her charade.

HEARTLESS WOMAN (CONT’D)

I think we’re a match.

DAVID

Yes, I think so too. Would you like

for us to live as a couple from now

on?

HEARTLESS WOMAN

Yes. We’ll inform the reception

desk in the morning.

DAVID

Great.