Dogtooth (2009)

Original Title

Κυνόδοντας Kynodontas

Genre

Drama

Director

Yorgos Lanthimos

Country

Greece

Cast

Christos Sterfiouglou, Michelle Valley, Angeliki Papoulia, Mary Tsoni, Christos Passalis, Anna Kalaitzidou

Storyline

The father (Christos Sterfiouglou), the mother (Michelle Valley) and their three kids (Angeliki Papulia, Mary Tsoni and Christos Passalis) live isolated in a country estate. And they are happy. But then the father decides to pay his colleague Christina (Anna Kalaitzidou) to appease the sexual urges of his son and the happiness and tranquillity of the family are put at stake. 

Opinion

Being one of those who absolutely loved The Lobster (it's one of my favourite movies ever to be honest, and I find myself thinking about it very often), and waiting for Lanthimos's new film once again starring Colin Farrell, I decided to give his debut a try. And, although I didn't love it as much as I loved The Lobster, Dogtooth is another quite brilliant film from the Greek filmmaker.

But it's also another film you either love or hate and it's all because of Lanthimos' writing. There isn't more to the plot than the simple storyline you can read above. Also, it manages to be both incredibly absurd and believable at the same time. And it doesn't really kick in until about halfway through the movie. And it's pretty uncomfortable and unpleasant as well.

But that's not all. The dialogue is pretty mundane, very random and incredibly slow. And then there are the characters. They are some of the most wooden and underdeveloped characters I've seen on screen. They are quite dull and unrelatable. They are extremely bizarre and even disgusting at times and yet they are incredibly interesting to watch because of their emotional blandness and weird actions. And for the first time in my life, I'm praising wooden acting because it's just what the film needs to be more effective.

So it's definitely not a film for everybody, but I'd still recommend to watch it because after all is a great but still disturbing political satire that tackled dictatorship while making a social commentary on the extremes of isolation, on manipulation and corruption. It's basically another twisted dystopian film that I'm sadly not very sure it's far from reality.