Dogtooth (film)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
"At times seems as much an exercise in perversity as an examination of it [...] the static wide-screen compositions are beautiful and strange, with the heads and limbs of the characters frequently cropped. The light is gauzy and diffuse, helping to produce an atmosphere that is insistently and not always unpleasantly dreamlike. You might think of paintings by Balthus or maybe Alex Katz, though the implied stories in those pictures are more genuinely evocative and haunting than the actual narrative of Dogtooth."--A. O. Scott of The New York Times |
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Dogtooth is a 2009 Greek film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos about a husband and wife who keep their children ignorant of the world outside their property well into adulthood. The drama stars Christos Stergioglou, Michelle Valley, Angeliki Papoulia, Mary Tsoni, and Christos Passalis.
Plot
A couple and their adult son and two adult daughters live in a fenced compound. The children have no knowledge of the outside world; their parents say they will be ready to leave once they lose a dogtooth, and that one can only leave safely by car. The children entertain themselves with endurance games, such as holding their hands under hot water, and are rewarded with stickers for good behaviour and punished with violence for bad. They believe they have a brother on the side of the fence to whom they throw supplies.
The father pays a young woman who works at his factory, Christina, to come to the house and have sex with the son. Frustrated with the son's refusal to give her cunnilingus, Christina trades her headband in exchange for cunnilingus from the elder daughter.
The father visits a dog training facility and demands to have his dog returned. The trainer refuses because the dog has not finished its training, and asks: "Do we want an animal or a friend?"
When the children are terrified by a stray cat in the garden, the son kills it with a pair of pruning shears. Deciding to take advantage of the incident, the father shreds his clothes, covers himself in fake blood, and tells his children that their unseen brother was killed by a cat, the most dangerous creature. After he teaches them to bark on all fours to fend off cats, the family holds a memorial service for the brother.
Christina again barters for oral sex from the elder daughter. The daughter rejects her offer of hair gel and demands the Hollywood film tapes in her bag. She watches the films in secret and afterwards recreates scenes and quotes their dialogue. When the father discovers the tapes, he beats her with one of them, then goes to Christina's flat and hits her with her VCR, cursing her future children to be corrupted by "bad influences".
The parents decide that, with Christina no longer available, they will have the son choose one of his sisters as a replacement. After fondling both sisters with his eyes closed, he chooses the elder. She is uncomfortable during their sex and afterwards recites threatening dialogue from the film Rocky IV to her brother.
During a performance for the parents' wedding anniversary, the elder daughter dances the choreography from the film Flashdance, disturbing her parents. Later, she knocks out one of her dogteeth with a dumbbell and hides in the boot of her father's car. The father discovers her tooth fragments and searches for her outside fruitlessly. He drives to work the next day; the car sits outside the factory, unattended.
Cast
- Christos Stergioglou as father
- Michelle Valley as mother
- Angeliki Papoulia as older daughter
- Mary Tsoni as younger daughter
- Christos Passalis as son
- Anna Kalaitzidou as Christina
