Towards the end of the film DOGTOOTH, an adventurous choice for a Best Foreign Language Film nomination from Greece directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, a young woman stands in the family bathroom with a hand weight and proceeds to punch herself in the mouth with it until one of her teeth is knocked out. When her younger sister discovers that she has done this (and subsequently taken off), she awakens her dad by first licking his hand and then, after straddling him and unbuttoning his shirt, licking his chest.
If that sounds good to you, you’ll like DOGTOOTH. If it sounds insane, as I’m hoping it should to anyone, the film is only watchable as a car crash-styled fascination. Billed as a dark comedy, DOGTOOTH is 90 minutes lacking in rationality and morality. And I have to tell you that I never laughed, not once.
There are aspects of DOGTOOTH that are visionary, such as sharply-contrasting visuals and tone. The film, for all practical purposes, is a science fiction movie, yet it’s set on the grounds of a comfortable suburban home with a spacious yard and in-ground pool. There, a husband and wife raise their three young adult children. None of them are named. Only the father leaves the house, so that he can earn a living for the family by running a local factory. If the wife wants to call her husband, she uncovers a hidden phone in their bedroom; the kids are completely closed off from the outside world.
If you think that’s weird, you don’t know weird. The dad brings a woman named Christina over regularly. She is blindfolded first. The purpose of her visits is to satisfy his son’s sexual needs. Sex in this film, as it is in many European films, is graphic and in plain view. In this film, it often feels moments away from pornography, were it not for the fact that every sexual act in this film is presented with all the passion of a business exchange. Christina eventually gets bored with the young man and coaxes one of his sisters into some, um, licking. You can let your mind wander on that one.
A huge fence surrounds the house and yard, and one of the behavior modifications used on the kids is that they are told that they have a brother who lives on the other side of the fence because he was bad and this is his punishment. Throughout the film, each of the three kids is seen staring at the fence or going near it; one even sneaks cake out of the house to throw over the fence, hoping to feed her brother. But the brother, of course, is just one of many things that is completely made up by their parents. And when they feel their children are getting too inquisitive about the real world, they “kill off” the brother in dramatic and incredulous fashion, instilling the lesson that safety only exists within the house. Eventually, the father decides that Christina is a corrupting influence on the family and does away with her – by beating her with a VCR. His next brilliant idea is to suggest incest as a way of meeting his son’s carnal needs.
The kids are taught their own vocabulary. If they hear a word from Christina that is unfamiliar to them, they ask a parent about it and are given crazy answers that they have no ability to discredit. A “zombie,” for example, is a “small yellow flower.” One daughter asks her mother to pass the phone at dinner and receives a salt shaker. In addition, the kids compete in bizarre endurance contests and receive stickers as rewards for their efforts. One of the film’s most striking images is watching the young man having very graphic and passion-free sex with Christina as she’s grabbing the headboard of his bed, which is covered in stickers as a little kid might decorate his room.
DOGTOOTH is such a puzzling world unto itself that I had to keep a list on paper while watching the film of everything I was seeing and try to put things together as I went along. My observations included everything from the youngest daughter cutting the feet off of Barbie dolls while shrieking as if the pain was her own to the kids being told that their mother is pregnant with “two kids and a dog” so that the father can explain the existence of the family dog he bought that is being trained at a kennel before it joins the family. There must be a reason for everything, but the kids don’t know those reasons until the dad tells them. And the film doesn’t give us any of the reasons. Truth be told, I often felt I had little reason to continue watching this perverse movie.
Lanthimos sprinkles the film with bizarre frame compositions that often cut off the heads and limbs of the characters onscreen. He also shows us a shocking amount of matter-of-fact and graphic violence that, even when it doesn’t draw blood (and it frequently does) is as horribly violent as anything in a Hollywood film. While watching, I was reminded of Lars Von Trier’s “Antichrist.” I thought that movie was the most outrageous thing I’d ever seen. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think DOGTOOTH has it beat. At least I cared about one of the characters in that movie. I’m not sure I cared about anything in this one. I guess I wanted to see the kids escape; I felt sorry for them. But Lanthimos has all of his actors deliver their lines with an anesthetized chill, making it difficult for the audience to draw close to anyone.
Like the aforementioned “Antichrist,” DOGTOOTH is more of a cinematic experiment than it is a movie that could possibly satisfy an audience in any conceivable way that a “normal” film would satisfy an audience. And like that film, a fascinating psychological idea – worth of exploration – falls prey to ridiculous plot twists and visuals. I will admit that I couldn’t turn away from DOGTOOTH, as revolted as I was by it. But that’s not enough to make it a good movie. Comedies should make you laugh. This one doesn’t. And probing psychological studies should make you think. This one only shocks.
1.0 out of 4
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