Review of Dogtooth (2009) by Shane S — 03 May 2011

Wow. Talk about a dark satire.

I'm surprised that they could even make these types of films anymore - I really didn't know directors had it in them. Every time I see a good opportunity for a satire, it either becomes a stylistic, yet well-made, melodrama ("Bad Education") or a film that takes itself a little too seriously ("The Adjustment Bureau"). However, Giorgos Lanthimos, a Greek director whose work I'm mostly unfamiliar with, released his critically acclaimed "Dogtooth" this year. By showing the dark side of bowdlerizing definitions in order to protect their children from "the dark world" and by allowing various deplorable acts to take part in this gated household while completely annihilating the curiosity of these kids by practically scaring them witless, this not only becomes a bleak and scathing (that's an understatement) satire on modern over-protective parenting, but also the mythology and false interpretations of religion.

This film is definitely not for everybody - like most of these critically-acclaimed foreign dramas we've been gobbling up (save for the G-rated "Russian Ark"), this film tends to show things that mainstream American cinema would dare not show. Along with its bleak thematic elements, there are parallels to incest, child abuse, mental retardation, and even the negatives of puberty. However, unlike characters like Beningo and Angel, who do the transgressive mainly out of their love for others, the siblings in "Dogtooth" simply do not know what they're doing. It reminds me a bit of the pacing in Fellini's "La dolce vita" - that aimless wandering spotted with some of these most disturbing and somehow darkly comic scenes of excess and everything about their ideology going horribly, horribly wrong.

So, yeah. The acting's really good; the cinematography, while Wes Anderson-ish, is perfectly bleak and left-of-center; the story is completely innovative and fresh for my disillusioned mind; and the script is near perfect.

This is the best movie I've seen this year - so far.