Before filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos carved out a place in the annals of cinema with absurdist, existential dark comedies like The Lobster, The Favourite, and Poor Things, he made the comparatively low-key Dogtooth. This astonishingly dark, morbidly humorous 2009 feature put Lanthimos on the map, winning the prestigious Prix Un Certain Regard award at the Cannes Film Festival. It also happens to be his arguably most straightforward narrative, without resorting to quirky embellishments or purposefully vague affectations (I’m talking to you, Kinds of Kindness). Therein lies the quiet power of Dogtooth: it methodically lures the viewer into its hellish maw.
The plot revolves around a family ruled over by a nasty patriarch (Christos Stergioglou). He takes “helicopter parenting” to a whole new level. His grown children – two teenage daughters and a son – have never been outside the perimeter of their wealthy grounds. His wife hasn’t either, at least for a long time. The “children” learn their own version of the dictionary, wherein any words associated with the outside world are used in a different context: over dinner, one of the siblings asks to pass them the “phone” (referring to the salt). When the mother is confronted by her daughter about the definition of the word “pu**y”, she stammers that it’s a “big light” (“For example, the pu**y is switched off, the room plunges into darkness”).
The siblings never come in contact with anyone. They play games like placing their fingers under searing-hot water and inhaling a Novocain-like anesthetic. They slice off dolls’ limbs – and sometimes slice at each other. The brother periodically has mechanical sex with one of his father’s employees, whom the father pays to do so. They have no understanding of effect and consequence, of the meaning of violence, sex, or love. They are trained puppies, obeying their master, but humans are not canines, and things simmer beneath the surface.
A haunting family celebration scene from Dogtooth, where the daughters perform under their father’s strict rule.
“…takes ‘helicopter parenting’ to a whole new level…”
This despot has created such an isolated ecosystem that when he secretly throws fish in their pool, his daughter thinks they just appeared there, out of nowhere; she silently watches her father hunt them with a harpoon. The elaborate, grisly scenario he concocts to explain a kitten that happened to wander into their yard is both literally and figuratively gut-splitting. He sadistically keeps his kids marinated in a state of adolescence and perpetual obedience, while the mother (Michele Valley) has no choice but to play along apathetically.
While without doubt indebted in both style and content to masters such as Haneke and von Trier, Lanthimos also establishes himself as a visual artist with a singular, focused vision. It’s not a comfortable watch by any means, nor was it intended as such. The framing is deliberately off-putting at times; everything is cold, clinical: the sex, the dialogues, the lighting, the mood. Despite the deliberate pace, Lanthimos holds the audience rapt with sudden shocks of violence and just plain fuc**ed-up sh*t – a head bashed in with a VCR, that damn cat, incest, a bark-training session, and undoubtedly the best translation of Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon” ever committed to celluloid.
The film effortlessly examines hefty themes like freedom, toxic masculinity, privilege, familial bonds (and the need to escape them). The big, obvious metaphor is the patriarch’s own dog, Rex, who’s at a sadistic training facility, being “molded” to the owner’s liking. None of us wants our children to grow up-or, at least, most of us don’t-but Lanthimos takes this platitude to a whole new level, showcasing balls the size of, well, a Dobermann.
"…holds the audience rapt with sudden shocks of violence and just plain fuc**ed-up sh*t"
