EFF: Dogtooth (2009)

Dogtooth

“A black-comic poem of dysfunction, a veritable operetta of self-harm, this brilliant and bizarre film... is superbly acted and icily controlled - it grips from the very first scenes.” — The Guardian

A hyper-stylized mixture of physical violence and verbal comedy, Dogtooth is a darkly funny look at three teenagers confined to their parents’ isolated country estate and kept under strict rule and a bizarre regimen — an inscrutable scenario that suggests a warped experiment in social conditioning and control. Terrorised into submission by their father, the children spend their days devising games and learning an invented vocabulary (a salt shaker is a “telephone,” an armchair is “the sea”) — until a trusted outsider, brought in to satisfy the son’s libidinal urges, starts offering forbidden VHS tapes in return for sexual favours, exposing them to the world outside their closeted existence.

With Dogtooth, Yorgos Lanthimos announced himself as a daring and original cinematic voice. This multi-award-winning film perversely lays bare and picks apart the nuclear family unit via a twisted comedic nightmare that is hard to shake.

Winner of Un Certain Regard at Cannes Film Festival 2009 
Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film 2011

Rating

R18+

Duration

97 min

Language

Greek (English subtitles)

Director

Yorgos Lanthimos