DOGTOOTH

One of the best independent foreign films of last year, and a winner at the Cannes Film Festival for 'Un Certain Regard' award, Dogtooth was finally released in cinemas in the UK in April. If many of readers haven't deduced already, LBF is part Greek, and perhaps due to a combination of queer patriotism for my country and semi-curiosity that something of such praise has budded from Greek cinema, I felt a sense of duty to see Dogtooth. And my God, it was brilliant.
The contrast between the film's rural and urban settings is no more than a artist's spyglass interpretation of what is the absolute ordinary in Greece today. Strange for me, having driven down winding dirt roads decorated with hapless thorned bushes all over Greece, and having passed the dilapidated green garbage bins hopelessly old and ragged, crawling with cats and their mewing kittens, Dogtooth revealed these scenarios me in a completely different light. The film deals with a dysfunctional family, where three children have been trapped within the confines of their family home till adulthood, unbeknown of the outside world, having been cruelly imprisoned by their own father. The director (Giorgios Lanthimos) warps for us a world we know and understand well, yet is selfishly manipulated through sex, lies, and the bliss full monotony of ignorance. In this way, Dogtooth, or Kynodontas as it is known in its original title, balances precariously on mental instability, incest, and the natural disturbed manner of a person who has been taught since childhood that they may only leave the safety of home and venture into the dangers of the real world once their 'Dogtooth' has fallen out.
Without giving it all away, all I can really say is go see this film. It will no doubt disturb you at some points, the rawness of its more brutal scenes, dark and mercurial in their conception, and the heartbreaking strive for freedom amalgamate to leave you feeling a bit dazed and confused when you finish watching, rather like when you witness an accident on the road, you may not be part of it, but the experience stays with you...