Dogtooth (2009)

“Dogtooth” (or in Greek: Kynodondas) is a 2009 dark drama/horror film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos about a father and mother who keep their children locked up in their property. The film won many awards including the “Prix Un Certain Regard” at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards. Greek critic Dimitris Danikas rated this film an eight out of ten and characterized it as “black, surreal, nightmarish” and Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 93% approval rating. The film also received lots of positive praise from Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou saying, “…Yes, we can do it during difficult times. I won’t say that the news shows that miracles happen, because the success of Yorgos Lanthimos is based on hard work, talent and his endless potential. Features that characterize the creative forces which lead Greece to a new era; forces which deserve our support and they will have it. Bravo Yorgos.” The film was chosen to represent Greece at the Oscars.

The film "Dogtooth" is basically about a father (Christos Stergioglou) and a mother (Michelle Valley) and their three adult children (a boy (Christos Passalis) and two girls (Aggeliki Papoulia and Mary Tsoni)) who live in a big, white house with a beautiful garden and a swimming pool. Though this may sound like a paradise, the entire house is surrounded by a tall fence and the children have never left their house ever since they were born. They have absolutely no idea what the outside world is like at all thanks to their parents. In order to preserve the innocence of their children from the bad influences of society, the father and mother teach them different meanings for everyday words. For example, the 'sea' is an arm chair and 'zombies' are little yellow flowers. The children are also taught that the cat is a dangerous monster that killed their ‘older’ brother (who may or may not have existed in the first place) and they never watch any television aside from home videos and they believe that airplanes are toys that fall down from the sky. According to their parents, the only way the children will ever be ready to face the outside world is if they lose their left or right 'dogtooth' (which we all know is impossible) and none of the family members aside from the father ever leave their home.

In order to satisfy his son's sexual urges, the father brings home a young security guard from his company named Christina (Anna Kalaitzidou). When driving to and from the house, Christina is blindfolded and the father pays her to sleep with his son. The entire family seems fond of Christina and like her very much. One day, Christina got tired of the son's preference for sex so she went to the oldest daughter and asked her to perform oral sex with her in exchange for a sparkling headband. She accepts and starts licking her. The next time, however, the oldest daughter wants something better in return and asks for two of Christina's video tapes ("Rocky" and "Jaws"). Christina hands them over and asks her to return them in a week. The oldest daughter watches the tapes and gets very influenced by them and starts to slowly learn what the outside world is really like. After discovering the tapes, her father beat the oldest daughter with them and then went over to Christina’s home and beat her with her vcr cursing her future children to be corrupted by “bad influences”. The parents then decided that one of the sisters has to perform Christina’s “task” with the son and the son chose the oldest daughter who was very uncomfortable during their sex scene.

Later on, the family celebrated the anniversary of their parents’ wedding. The son played a guitar while the two daughters danced. The oldest daughter danced the choreography from “Flashdance” to exhaustion and then devoured her dessert. Later that night, she went to the bathroom and smashed her face with a dumbbell to knock out a dogtooth. After she did that, she ran into her father’s car and put herself in the trunk. The entire family began searching for her after her father found the blood and tooth in the sink. They were unsuccessful in finding her after looking all over the yard. In the morning, the son and younger daughter start kissing and the father went to work without knowing his oldest daughter is in the car. The car sat outside his work and the daughter remained in the trunk.

In all honesty, I absolutely loved this movie! I’m so happy and proud that my country came out with such an amazing film…makes me even more proud to be Greek. The film was very informative, interesting, unique, and disturbing. I loved the cinematography and how clear everything looked. Yorgos Lanthimos used very interesting angles which really emphasized an ‘uneasy’ feeling to the audience setting a very ‘dark’ mood to the film even though everything was so bright. The film was very well paced and I really like how the director used images instead of dialogue to explain what is going on. The acting was really good too and each and every one of the actors gave excellent performances, especially Christos Stergioglou and Aggeliki Papoulia. Even though this movie is mostly classified as a drama or horror, it definitely has some very funny moments to it as well. The black humor in it works really well and I found myself laughing at quite a few scenes such as the barking scenes and when the father tells the children that Frank Sinatra is their grandfather and mistranslates the lyrics to “Fly Me to the Moon”. The director definitely has a witty sense of humor and I absolutely loved it since I am a big fan of black humor. This film is very open to interpretation and it’s up to the audience to determine as to why the parents did this to their children in the first place. Maybe, they simply felt it was perfect parenting or perhaps it had something to do with the ‘older’ brother or society. I think the film is a reflection to society in general and how we think we are free when in fact, we are all prisoners without even knowing about it.  Either way, the film doesn’t explain that so the interpretation is entirely up to you. If you enjoyed art films like “Carne”, “I Stand Alone”, “Visitor Q”, and “Funny Games” and really enjoy ‘thinking’ films…you will simply love “Dogtooth”! I give it a 10/10.