DOGTOOTH (Kynodontas) (2009) - ♦♦♦♦

Directed by - Yorgos Lanthimos

Written by - Efthymis Filippou, Yorgos Lanthimos

Starring - Christos Stergioglou, Michele Valley, Angeliki Papoulia

"A husband and a wife have kept their children ignorant of the world outside their property well into their adulthood. Dogtooth is a provocative look at the concept of family as an institution that can certainly appear to be an allegory for a wider scope examination of society. Nevertheless, even when taken at surface value, its premise remains perversely interesting throughout its duration. This is widely thanks to the confidence of its style. 

Lanthimos' film is compact, full of restrained energy that materializes into short outbursts of dark, shocking and sometimes violent developments. The film's composition is near perfect. Keeping the viewer at a distance, in an almost non-judgemental way, Thimios Bakatatakis' composed and static cinematography takes full advantage of its enveloping architecture - an expansive mansion which is in fact the leading siblings' entire world that gives the film a sense of timelessness, wealth and depravation. This particular style also flatters the contrast of seriousness and satire in its tone, therefore making it simultanously a bleak drama and a deadpan comedy. 

Made for a quarter of a million, Dogtooth made history by becoming the first Greek film to be entered in the main competition of the Cannes Film Festival in a decade, by earning an Academy Award nomination in the Best Foreign Language Film category, and for introducing the world to a fascinating new voice in world cinema, embodied by Yorgos Lanthimos."

Drama, Greece