The breakout 2009 Yorgos Lanthimos film “Dogtooth” commences a North American theatrical release in a 4K restoration format.
Parents confine their three adult children in a family compound in a state of childlike innocence through manipulation, violence and abuse. Sexual perversion including incest is omnipresent. Outrageous falsehoods and childlike games and contests preoccupy the adult children. The children are nameless. About the only contact with the outside world for the children is watching planes flying overhead and with a security guard employed at their father’s factory who offers sexual services to the children in the family compound.
The film has carried the banner of absurdity for some time and indeed it has a deep streak of that nature throughout. But it is not so absurd that it obfuscates the plot and the messages of the film if your mind is expansive enough to “rationalize” and “intellectualize” what transpires on the screen.
What you may wish to think about as you watch the film. Think of the three children as society as a whole and the film’s message becomes clearer:
- Reality is what you are conditioned to perceive. A daughter at the dinner table asks for the telephone to be passed to her. She has been taught that a telephone is a saltshaker.
- Economic systems manipulate workers. Factory owner father hires a plant security guard to provide sexual services for his children. Exploitative.
- What “normal sexuality” is how it is “taught”. The sexual games and practices in “Dogtooth” are perverse. The children are so conditioned one wonders if they understand the concept of sexuality. Incest and incest like behaviour is encouraged by the parents. A cornerstone of child sexual abuse is having the victim believe the abuse is normal.
- Psychological and physical violence are a means of control. The parents create a version of the exterior world as dangerous and only when a child’s dogtooth falls out and is regrown (never) will the parents permit their children to participate in the exterior world. Vicious man-eating housecats await you beyond the family compound!
- Lies, mistruths, lack of intellectual freedom and threats are a means of control.
- Think of an analogy to Adam and Eve. Will she open the car trunk?
- Repression and manipulation are not foolproof. Rebellion (or is it curiosity) may raise its head. Curiosity killed that cat.
Intellectual analysis particularly metaphorically gives you excellent MPG on this film.
But..why do the parents raise their children in a sea of ignorance?
The shock value is tremendous but it shouldn’t take you off the scent there are numerous messages that transcend its seemingly bizarre plot.
The trailer can be watched here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6Kh7-WIWF0
In Greek with English subtitles.
RKS 2025 Film Rating: 94/100.
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