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Film: Dogtooth
Release date: 13th September 2010
Certificate: 18
Running time: 97 mins
Director: Giorgos Lanthimos
Starring: Christos Stergioglou, Michelle Valley, Aggeliki Papoulia, Mary Tsoni, Hristos Passali
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Studio: Verve
Format: DVD
Country: Greece
The winner of Un Certain Regard at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, Giorgios Lanthimos’ Dogtooth is unforgettably bizarre and unsettling. The film is a surrealist blend of drama, thriller and horror genres with some dark, dark comedy thrown in; with significant satirical undertones forcing the viewer to question society and the nature of control over others. Lanthimos clearly doesn’t mind shaking up his audience, where the focus on an extremely unusual and unnamed Greek family (Father, Mother, Older Daughter, Younger Daughter and Son) highlights effectively disconcerting individual and collective central performances.
In a secluded area somewhere in Greece, Dogtooth portrays the life of a family unit under strict control of Mother (Michelle Valley) and Father (a most particularly menacing Christos Stergioglou). The parents are so strict in fact that their ‘children’ (who appear in their late teens to early twenties) have a life that exists only within a walled perimeter, where extraordinary tales of a cruel world outside the wall keep them inside a physical and psychological home-styled prison.
Older Daughter (Aggeliki Papoulia), Younger Daughter (Mary Tsoni) and Son (Hristos Passalis) display a naiveté that belies their years, where they have been taught that common domesticated cats are the most dangerous creatures alive, and aeroplanes are toys that can easily fall out of the sky and into their garden. Their parents have even created a warped language for their offspring to speak, where the ‘sea’ is an armchair and ‘zombies’ are flowers in the garden.
Father is the only member of the enclosed household who is allowed to venture outside the property, travelling to work in a second life as a factory manager. From here, he brings home female security officer Christina (Anna Kalaitzidou) to robotically satisfy the sexual urges of Son. However, Christina brings elements of the outside world into the household, and soon the manipulative Utopian world of the parents begins to crash around them as their ‘children’ begin to rebel amidst scenes of escalating violence and sexual awakening…
There is a metaphor in Dogtooth that sums up Father’s intent in the sinister upbringing of his grown-up children. When Father is talking to a dog trainer in his dual life away from his miniature empire, the trainer states: “Dogs are like clay, and our job here is to mould them.” Father (and indeed Mother) certainly believe that their offspring are theirs to be moulded at all times, extending the dog metaphor by telling their ‘children’ that they may only leave the compound if or when their ‘dogtooth’ falls out. There are also several disturbingly comic scenes where the family are trained by Father (utilising skills learned from the dog trainer) to bark like dogs to ward off danger, especially the allegedly terrifying threat of domestic cats.
In his portrayal of the devious head of household, Christos Stergioglou is the undoubted villain of the piece (although Mother is certainly more than an adequate accomplice). Stergioglou maintains a strange air of calm for almost the entire film, adding to a sense of creepiness that prevails in his shocking display of authority and hyper over-protectiveness over his progeny. Father is a man who engineers the continual lies and deceit which cover over his walled estate to the extent where he will rip his work clothes and pour fake blood over himself to suggest that he has been mauled by a cat in the world outside.
Yet in bringing Christina into his home, Father unwittingly invites the outside world in to his distorted domain. She becomes bored of the mechanical sex service she is paid to provide for the benefit of Son, and begins to sexually manipulate Older Daughter for her own satisfaction. It is through this that the rebellion against the parents begins, led by Older Daughter’s increased awareness of a world separate from all that she has known.
The performances of the grown-up ‘children’ are excellent, particularly where their blank naivety mixes with very adult extremes of sex and violence. All three siblings are continually forced into competition against each other, although the in-fighting common amongst siblings is here displayed with attempts to slash and break bones with knives and hammers. As Youngest Daughter (Mary Tsoni) is particularly childlike in her actions, despite the serious nature of the items she wants to ‘play’ with. For instance, in one scene she instigates a game with her sister whereby they both have to consume a high dosage of anaesthetic and “the first person to wake up wins.” The actors are so convincing in their roles, however, that we can see that the siblings do not have any awareness of the consequences of their actions, although with Older Daughter’s increasing awareness of human manipulation, their boundaries begin to be pushed to the limit.
The cinematography of Dogtooth adds to the film’s sense of absurdist surrealism, creating a somewhat slow and dreamlike tone. The staid decor of the house and the plain clothing of the unwitting prisoners (or Father’s family) hide the trauma bubbling under the surface. This is punctuated only in intermittent (but constantly threatening) scenes of graphic sex and violence, including, notably, a section of the film where Son attacks a cat that has wandered into the walled garden with a pair of garden shears.
Perhaps it’s no surprise that the Dogtooth DVD features only a trailer as a special feature, where the subject matter is hardly a mainstream barrel of laughs. Director Lanthimos succeeds however in hinting at the nature of extreme power and control amongst scenes of sex and violence that will offend, combining drama, horror and thriller genres with a very dark undercurrent of satirical humour most definitely not for the faint of heart. DB
Film: Dogtooth
Release date: 13th September 2010
Certificate: 18
Running time: 97 mins
Director: Giorgos Lanthimos
Starring: Christos Stergioglou, Michelle Valley, Aggeliki Papoulia, Mary Tsoni, Hristos Passali
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Studio: Verve
Format: DVD
Country: Greece
An intense study of three young adults contained within a fabricated existence constructed by their parents. Yorgos Lanthimos casts an unflinching eye on the taboo, his minimalist approach uncovering disturbingly real performances from a brave cast.
Father and Mother live a seemingly perfect existence in a large, secluded compound in the countryside, where they look after their three children.
Daughter, Older Daughter and Son never leave the compound on specific instruction of their parents, who tell them horror stories about the wildlife outside the garden fence.
The children spend their days learning a fabricated vocabulary and competing for the approval of their parents, in the hope that they will receive points of merit, or perhaps one of the toy airplanes that fly over the house and sometimes fall from the sky.
The only outside visitor to the compound is Christina, an employee of Father who services the sexual needs of Son. Christina soon begins to take advantage of Older Daughter, trading outside stimuli for sexual favours. This incurs the wrath of Father, who then decides to look within the family for a new sexual partner for Son…
Yorgos Lanthimos’s stark vision of an enforced microcosm has no real agenda other than the observation of cruel experimentation disguised as parental instinct. The reasons behind this experiment, the motivation of Mother and Father, and many of the films other moral conundrums, are open to interpretation.
There is a nihilistic streak running through Dogtooth that is rarely seen in modern cinema. Not since the early work of Lars Von Trier and Abel Ferrara has such an indifferent eye been cast on human suffering. As viewers, our compulsion to take sympathy on the children is at odds with our morbid fascination, which in turn is conducive towards being complicit with the parents. A purposeful lack of any kind of cinematic gloss accentuates the bleak realism of Lanthimos’ film. While not exactly dogme, the distinctly minimalist style is contextually apt and contributes greatly towards to the unsettling atmosphere.
The narrative of Dogtooth is steadfastly murky. No motive is offered for the parents’ decision to imprison their offspring; no explanation is given as to why they decide to fill their heads with a nonsense language and encourage them to compete in cruel popularity games that often end in shocking acts of violence.
When Father visits an elite canine training facility to retrieve a new addition to the family he is offered a clinical deconstruction of animal obedience, the only insight we have into the strange lives of the family is the expression of understanding on Father’s face.
The children should be an object of sympathy, yet even this isn’t as simple as it should be in Lanthimos’s strange, sombre reality. Daughter creates many of the games that start the fierce competition between her brother and sister. Son is replete with childlike innocence, yet his position as future patriarch means his role within the family is resented by his sisters. It is Older Sister, played with quiet confidence by Aggeliki Papoullia, who emerges as the film’s only glimmer of hope. Whether she is quoting Jaws by the pool or displaying a blossoming penchant for manipulation with Christina, Older Daughter seems to be the only one of the children that has evolved past the restrictive world created by the parents. Although, in the film’s final moments, the sense of hope is tainted by the bleak reality of the children’s institutionalised existence.
An unsettling psycho-drama that recalls Von Trier, Dogtooth is disturbing, thought provoking and, at times, uncomfortably amusing. Yorgos Lanthimos’ strange portrait of an experimental family unit attempts to embroil its audience in the sinister machinations of Mother and Father. KT
Film: Dogtooth
Release date: 23rd April 2010
Certificate: 18
Running time: 96 mins
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Starring: Christos Stergioglou, Michelle Valley, Aggeliki Papoulia, Mary Tsoni
Genre: Thriller/Drama
Studio: Verve
Format: Cinema
Country: Greece
We’ve all heard arguments that children these days are wrapped up in cotton wool by overprotective parents. Director Giorgos Lanthimos takes this critique and runs wild with it, demonstrating the cost of maintaining a perfect family in a film of obsession and isolation.
Dogtooth offers us a glimpse into the life of a Greek family, structured around a foundation of discipline and order, regimented by a compulsive father (Stregioglou). His determination to shield them from the outside world extends beyond the anxiety of a dutiful father, and his vision of an ideal family is embedded so deeply in his mindset that his grown-up son and two daughters (Passalis, Tsoni and Papoulina) have never been allowed to venture further than the bottom of the drive. Using the ignorance installed in the childish minds of his children, and ultimately manipulating their fear both of him and the unknown, he rules in his own familial prison.
Naïve and younger than their years, the children have been brainwashed with a false reality painted by their parents and reinforced by their seclusion. Brought up to believe in an elusive brother who defiantly left to live on the other side of “the wall”, they await the loss of their dogteeth to signify their authorised readiness to follow suit and leave the confines of their house.
Christina (Kalaitzidou) is a security officer employed by the father to come into the home and satisfy his son’s sexual needs; she is the only snatch of the outside world permitted into the household, under the watchful eye of the father.
Viewers follow the family as they encounter persistent threats of truth, which increasingly plague the head of the house and drive him to neurosis as he struggles to fend them off. His children on the other hand, develop a taste for Christina’s alien ways, and jeopardise the world that their father has worked so hard to secure…
Plot proves rather stark in this slow-paced drama, but this only makes it a stronger film. Its emphasis on characters and relationships between people is intensified by lengthy shots that linger not on carefully composed frames of stars’ faces, but on the family’s environment - their reality. Quirky but naturalistic dialogue weaves in and out of these scenes, which come together in a fragmented portrayal of a distorted lifestyle. Whilst a sense of distance detaches the viewer from the family, the very strangeness of the situation is engrossing and prompts further viewing, simply to find out what new peculiarity is about to happen.
Although rather dark in its theme, graphic in its sex scenes, and brutal in its occasional moments of violence, there are more than a few laughs along the way. Dog-barking lessons are just one of the bizarre customs adopted by the family: after all, what better way to deter those man-eating domestic cats? The absurd behaviour engrained in the children offer comic relief in circumstances that are in fact quite tragic.
The performances of those playing the children are intimately well-observed. They interact with each other in a way we expect to see in wildlife documentaries, playing and teasing each other like a litter of wolf cubs. They are competitive and quarrelsome, yet completely reliant on each other to keep boredom and loneliness at bay. Their father encourages their behaviour by inventing contests for them to participate in, so that they constantly strive to better each other and fulfil their father’s expectations. Whilst viewers may find it difficult to identify with any one of the children, the father is undoubtedly the villain of the piece, played with cool hostility by Stergioglou. His endless efforts to maintain power over his family range from cutting off labels from water bottles to creating a dialect unique to his house. As he carries out such exertions with admirable diligence, his complete lack of compassion and emotion move the viewer to resent him.
Comedy and repulsion successfully meet in Dogtooth to explore what really goes on behind closed doors. No one regards their family as normal, but few can claim to have suffered the upbringing presented in Lanthimos’s latest. RS
