Dogtooth

DOGTOOTH

(Yorgos Lanthimos, 2009) *****

This is disturbed suburbia – while an idyllic-looking Greek summer idles by, a family go a degree more mental than they already were after the Father imprisons them within the confines of the garden and throws aeroplanes at them. This warped environment is best defined by its sex scenes. Not the sexy kind, the bad kind. It’s when they all start having uncomfortable sex that things go out the window, and consequently into the garden, but also bundled in the boot of the car.

Dogtooth revolves around a concisely named family — Oldest Daughter, Son and Youngest Daughter — young adults who have been kept completely sheltered from the outside world by their quietly domineering Father (a brilliant turn by Christos Stergioglou) in a bid to preserve their child-like innocence and, as a result, are charmingly naive and afraid to set foot beyond the compound-like walls of their remote villa.

Obviously, the good times can’t last, which is sort of the central theme to the film. The introduction and raggedy presence of Christina (Anna Kalaitzidou), a security guard at the Father’s work who is shipped in, blindfold, to unblinkingly service the Son’s sexual needs, marks an approaching storm of suppressed angst. After she introduces the Oldest Daughter to the dual evils of sexual favours and VHS cassettes the film adopts a darker and more violent tone, while maintaining the core undercurrent of black humour.

This is a rich oil-field of context on which to build a film, and some of the most rewarding, darkly comic moments stem from it. Credit must also go to the cast for their spot-on portrayal of grown-children, punctuated with subtle little touches (the way the Son throws cake over a fence, stiff-armed and childlike, while each glass of juice served in the film is chugged and demolished like a thirsty kid trying to bust back outside and play), as too the director, for delicately realising the whole, unsettling concept.

The film is littered with subtle horrors and beautifully realised in saturated Greek technicolor; a horror/beauty contrast that smacks of Antichrist-lite. This extends to the increasingly grim sex scenes, scattered with moments of humour , like when Christina and the Son both stare patiently at his unresponsive junk in preparation for some perfunctory intercourse, while the most gruesome of the lot is the Oldest Daughter painted rouge for the Son’s enjoyment. It’s acutely uncomfortable, at once timid and blunt, and exactly how you’d imagine a man- and woman-child would go about banging, if that wasn’t so horribly perverse.

Dogtooth won Yorgos Lanthimos Un Certain Regard at Cannes for the film last year, following the illustrious footsteps of, y’know, a load of other arty films you’ve never heard of , but remains an black comedy worth seeking out when it goes on general release on April 23rd.

Words by Joel Golby