DOGTOOTH – The DVD Review

Review by Cassondra Feltus

In a blend of horror and black comedy, Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’  DOGTOOTH successfully profiles the destructive consequences of authoritative control.

In this strange world of elaborate lies and delusions, a nameless family, consisting of two parents and their three children exist in complete isolation.

Never exploring outside their secluded utopia, the two daughters and a son “have been educated in the ways of the world through a truly deranged approach to homeschooling.” (Brophy) The young adults entertain themselves in the most unusual ways, from perilous games of endurance to incestuous sexual experimentation. Considering the years of false teachings and regular abuse, their twisted sense of pleasure is not unexpected, but nonetheless unsettling.

Mother and father’s methods of dehumanization, including frequent laps to the face, result in the children’s robot-like sensibilities and the impossibility to mentally mature. Rewarded with stickers and toy airplanes, of which they believe fall freely from the sky, the children are literally treated like dogs, causing one to wonder if they really are viewed as pets.
Yorgos gives no explanation as to why these parents deprive their children of a conventional and healthy upbringing. It is unclear whether the mother is willfully contributing to this sadistic experiment, or if she herself is brainwashed by the father.

What is their motivation? Are the children victims of some form of canine fetishism?

Despite their best efforts, the parents are constantly struggling to maintain a barrier between the children and the outside world. An unexpected encounter with a animal presents a “good opportunity” for the parents to impose a new fear and false truth: cats are vicious, murderess creatures.

The only outsider welcomed into their home, Christina, employed by the father for arranged conjugal visits with the son, lends the eldest daughter video tapes in exchange for a homoerotic lick session. This trade ends badly for Christina with a lethal blunt to the head with her own VCR. At this moment, father delivers one of the most confusing and chilling lines of the film: “I hope your kids have bad influences and develop bad personalities. I wish this with all my heart.”

One cannot help but laugh at the sheer absurdity of the anomalistic behavior, speech, and ideology of this family. I found myself laughing and cringing during the same scenes, like when father covers himself in fake blood, claiming the unknown brother was killed by a cat, and when the youngest daughter charges her brother with a knife, because he stole her toy. Roger Ebert feels the dialogue “sounds composed entirely of sentences memorized from tourist phrase books,” which is an accurate description of its oddness.

DOGTOOTH is dark in content, but not in light. The stark white interior of the home has the unpleasant look and feel of a hospital. Outside in their garden, it is almost as if they are in a dreamlike haze, but at the surface a painfully realistic nightmare. “The static wide-screen compositions are beautiful and strange, with the heads and limbs of the characters frequently cropped,” says New York Times critic, A. O. Scott.

DOGTOOTH is one of the most disturbing and brilliantly crafted films of independent cinema. Scott simply refers to the film as a “conversation piece,” neither praising nor dismissing Lanthimos’ work. “Though the conversation may not proceed quite into the depths of psychosexual analysis that Dogtooth seems to invite.” Roger Ebert similarly views the film as a “car crash,” at which “you cannot look away.”

What I learned from DOGTOOTH: licking someone is the best way to get presents, cats are the most dangerous creatures known to mankind, and there are many words that I thought I knew the meaning of but do not. Also, video equipment has other, violent purposes.