Review of Dogtooth (2009) by Wayne S — 11 Mar 2011

Dogtooth (Kynodontas) (2009) is a film unlike any other I have ever seen; provocative and disturbing, yet oddly comical. There is no way to describe the plot, nor should I, since part of the experience of Dogtooth is trying to decipher exactly what one is watching. I will volunteer only, since you'll find this on the DVD case or film synopsis, that it involves a family living mostly apart from the outside world, within a walled compound. The film is in Greek and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. It won Best Film in the "Un Certain Regard" category at Cannes, and was nominated for an Academy Award in the best foreign language film category.

Filmed mostly with static camera shots, naturalistic, with no screen music except what comes from radios, phonographs, or the characters themselves. Frequently the actors are partly outside the frame, their heads or the tops of heads cut off. It is, in a sense, an anti-film. Nothing you will see is predictable. The flow of the narrative is punctuated sometimes by disturbing outbreaks of violence, and the few sex scenes are completely matter of fact, realistic, yet bizarre and unsettling.

If you take this one on, be prepared for a stretch and a challenge. You may feel, at the end,.

As shut off from meaning as if you had just spent an hour and a half on another planet.

I have my ideas of what the movie is trying to say, but it probably will have a different meaning for others. For references in tone, I might suggest the films of Michael Haneke, or "Gummo" by Harmony Korine. For some reason, while watching, I was reminded of an equally strange Todd Haynes film called "Safe," perhaps by the growing sense of isolation that the film imparts. But these are just cinematic echoes, and useless in preparing you for the dramatic puzzle, the cinematic challenge that Dogtooth presents.

See this one if you think there is nothing new in the world.