Dogtooth Review

I actually saw Dogtooth last weekend but I’ve been holding off writing the review because I needed to give the film time to settle. I wouldn’t be much good as a professional reviewer would I? “Yes I know this film was released a fortnight ago but I’ve been letting it settle.” Actually, a quick look at Empire’s website reveals it was released April 16th… Whoops! Anyone reckon I’ll be three weeks late reviewing Tom Cruise in Knight And Day (“I’m the guy! I’m the guy!”) Liam Neeson in The A Team or Sly Stallone in The Expendables? Well who cares? The heart wants what it wants.

Anyhoo…

Watching Dogtooth, I REALLY wasn’t sure about it. It’s very, very slow, the single location stifling, its subject matter difficult and challenging. But Dogtooth has stayed with me, its many dark and disturbing moments nestling and taking permanent residence in my mind as I look back and think… who the fuck comes up with something like this?!?

A married couple (never given names) keep their three children permanently confined to the house and the garden, somewhere in the Greek countryside. The Father is the only one who leaves the house, driving to work each day. The children, two sisters and a brother, are in their late teens/early twenties but, despite being physically mature, are still basically infants in their minds, their notion of the “real world” where cats are dangerous predators and indeed the entire world beyond the walls of the house are filled with unrelenting dangers, completely manufactured and contrived by their parents. This is done seemingly to preserve the parents’ notion of their children’s innocence, although their exact motivations are never fully articulated and are open to interpretation. The son experiences the bizarre contradiction of emotional childlike innocence with the sexual appetites typical of a young man and to satisfy his desires, the Father brings home Christina, security guard at his place of work. Christina of course can’t help but bring some sense of the outside world with her and, as the children’s behaviour as a result of their upbringing intensifies and the parents’ controlling lies necessarily deepen to compensate for her influence, well, you just know that none of this is going to end well.

One of the things that strikes you watching the film is the matter-of-fact way it deals with its material. There are moments of dreadful violence, explicit nudity and sex (God bless the Europeans) and the piece as a whole is very, very dark. But there is never any hysteria, or for that matter, much in the way of the traditional cinematic build up that signals something bad is about to happen. These moments occur suddenly and spontaneously, much as most acts of sex or violence do in real life. Music is used incredibly sparsely and much of the film occurs in the beautifully sunny back garden, complete with fantastic looking swimming pool, the bright visuals serving to underscore the darkness of the story. The film definitely takes some getting into. Around fifteen minutes in I found myself becoming irritated and very much needing the film to “click” which it did do, but I wonder now if that had something to do with my reticence to jump on board for the rest of it at the time. Very little actually happens and the various things the family get up to, the sampling of anaesthesia to pass the time, play fights that would be harmless if they were children except that they’re very much not children and so real damage is done, and Christina’s visits, have an anecdotal, incidental feeling to them.

Interesting also is the sense of bone dry humour that permeates the film. Writer/director Giorgos Lanthimos finds the blackly comic in scenes that should be nothing but harrowing. Even as the world the parents have so carefully constructed begins to unravel around them, there are moments when you simply don’t know whether to be appalled or amused. It’s this sense of world that is the best thing about the film. 97% of Dogtooth occurs in one location but the characters and their situation are so believable (which is weird given how outrageous the story is) that you absolutely feel drawn into a bizarre, unsettling and completely new world. This is one of the best examples of a film that makes a distinction between its world and its setting, the world strange and uncomfortable, the setting seemingly mundane and familiar and it’s this disconnect between the two that contributes enormously to the tone and atmosphere of the piece. Whatever way you react to the film, what's for certain is the fact that you've never seen anything like it before.

Dogtooth is not a film for everyone. To be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure it's a film for me. But it’s disturbing and odd in the best possible way, claustrophobic and unafraid to push buttons and provoke. It’s incredibly detailed (sometimes painfully so) completely thought through and executed with understated confidence in the most unflinching way imaginable. It’s also a film that gets under your skin, crawls into your brain, curls up into a ball and refuses to go away. The only solution? A bit of Tom Cruise grinning his way through a romping caper movie. Preferably as a super spy. Maybe riding a motorcycle while shooting at the bad guys. With a title that employs the worst pun in recent years.

Hey look, I’ve eaten my greens. Now I just want some dessert.

7/10