Review of Dogtooth (2009) by Matthew L — 27 Mar 2011

The winner of the Prix Un Certain Regard at Cannes, this incredible and scary Greek film has recently been nominated for an Oscar. Yet, with the usual dull and faintly saccharine fare nominated for Best Picture, this film couldn't be more different. Profoundly idiosyncratic, one watches transfixed at all the bizarre-yet-familiar, askew images that flash past one's eyes. Surely influenced by the Josef Fritzl case of a few years back, the film details the warped lives of a superficially normal, middle-class Greek family. Home-schooled, the three children are taught the wrong meanings of words, encouraged to act like dogs and forbidden to leave the beautiful grounds of the compound they live in. Why things are as they are is only ever hinted at and a sexuality both innocent and otherwise casts a shadow over the proceedings.

The action starts with an ingenious scene in which the three kids are being played a tape-recording teaching them the incorrect meanings of the words like "motorway" and "road-trip", seemingly needlessly, which immediately plunges the viewer in to this world of sinister strangeness. The action doesn't let up from there as we see the paterfamilias driving a female security guard from the factory where he works to his home to service his twenty-something son. With the children kept in this stymied state of childishness, the father is the only one to leave their house, going to and from work and running the necessary errands. Inevitably curious, his children yearn to know of the dangers that dwell outside their four walls, their stultified cabin fever leading to random acts of violence against one another.

The cinematography of the film really is something to marvel at, as every single shot exudes a bright and dreamy beauty. At times, the action is shown using a Haneke-esque fixed shot, which beheads some characters and lends the images a Big Brother feel. The acting, it must be said, is universally brilliant. One really feels drawn in to the strange irrational logic (if you'll permit the oxymoron) of the household, whilst simultaneously being appalled. As the film meanders along unfussily, the gradual accretion of detail provides the plot with real impetus as the security guard is cast off for leading one daughter astray, the children long to be out, and the real meaning of dogtooth is revealed. A mysterious older brother and a Doberman being trained by an outsider deepen the mystery.

A real strength of the movie is that it makes no attempt to justify the perverse actions of the dominant father and his attendant wife. It would surely be impossible in 90 minutes, anyway. What it does provide you with is a blackly humourous, starkly individual exposition of the family. Watch it and be gripped right up until the brilliant ending. Unmissable.