Starring Christos Stergioglou, Michelle Valley, Angeliki Papoulia, Mary Tsoni and Christos Passalis
Directed by Jorgos Lanthimos
Greece 2009
97 minutes
'Dogtooth' was released in 2009 - the year we started and is the first major film from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos whose latest picture 'The Favourite' is currently in cinemas - enjoying rave reviews and big box office success. His other films 'The Lobster' and 'The Killing Of A Sacred Deer' have attracted much attention - sometimes dividing audiences and critics with their surreal narratives and off-kilter characterisation.
'Dogtooth' depicts a family living in a walled compound - the grown up children have been told by their parents that the world is a dangerous place - unsafe for them to go into until they lose a dogtooth (a canine) They are misled by the parents into thinking that aeroplanes are tiny objects and that cats are incredibly dangerous and savage creatures.
Incarcerated and unaware of normal behaviour the children begin to experiment with sex...
In 'Dogtooth' Lanthimos shows himself to be the modern successor to the great Spanish surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel - the black humour and twisted reality of the dialogue and situations are at once disturbing and revealing. The cinematography is unsettling - Roger Ebert wrote that Lanthimos has 'complete command of visuals and performances. His cinematography is like a series of family photographs of a family with something wrong with it'
Just as 'The Favourite' is an historical drama like no other you have seen so 'Dogtooth' will challenge your preconceptions and give you a very strange and different take on family life.
It is a shocking and perverse drama but clearly the work of a significant artist who shows us the world in a way no other living film maker does.
