Dogtooth (film)
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''Dogtooth'' ( el, Κυνόδοντας; ''Kynodontas'') is a 2009 Greek psychological drama film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. Written by Lanthimos and
Efthymis Filippou Efthymis Filippou ( gr, Ευθύμης Φιλίππου, ; born 18 January 1977) is a Greek screenwriter, known for his collaborations with Yorgos Lanthimos. He was the winner of the Golden Osella Award for Best Screenplay at the 68th Venice ...
, the film is about a husband and wife (
Christos Stergioglou Christos Stergioglou (; born 1952) is a Greek actor. He won the award for Best Actor at the 2002 Thessaloniki International Film Festival. He has appeared in more than 20 films since 1981. He currently stars in the Channel 4 sitcom '' Stath Lets ...
and Michelle Valley) who keep their children (
Angeliki Papoulia Angeliki Papoulia ( gr, Αγγελική Παπούλια; born 1975) is a Greek actress and theatre director. In film, she is most notable for her roles in ''Dogtooth'', ''Alps'' and '' The Lobster'' by Yorgos Lanthimos, and '' A Blast'' and ...
, Mary Tsoni and Christos Passalis) ignorant of the world outside their property well into adulthood. ''Dogtooth'' is Lanthimos's second feature film. It won the
Prix Un Certain Regard (, meaning 'a certain glance') is a section of the Cannes Film Festival's official selection. It is run at the Debussy, parallel to the competition for the . This section was introduced in 1978 by Gilles Jacob. The section presents 20 films w ...
at the
2009 Cannes Film Festival The 62nd Cannes Film Festival was held from 13 May to 24 May 2009. French actress Isabelle Huppert was the President of the Jury. Twenty films from thirteen countries were selected to compete for the Palme d'Or. The awards were announced on 23 M ...
and was nominated for
Best Foreign Language Film This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards. Best Actor/Best Actress *See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...
at the
83rd Academy Awards The 83rd Academy Awards ceremony, organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best films of 2010 in the United States and took place on February 27, 2011, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles beg ...
.


Plot

A couple live in a fenced-in compound with their adult son and two adult daughters. The children have no knowledge of the outside world; their parents say they will be ready to leave once they lose a dogtooth, and that one can only leave safely by car. The children entertain themselves with
endurance game An endurance game is a game where the object is to last as long as possible under some sort of stress. The stress might be physical pain, fear, social embarrassment or any other negative sensation. The important distinguishing feature of endura ...
s, such as keeping a finger in hot water. They believe they have a brother on the other side of the fence to whom they throw supplies or stones. The parents reward good behavior with stickers and punish bad behavior with violence. The father pays a security guard at his factory, Christina, to come to the house and have sex with his son. Frustrated by the boy's refusal to give her cunnilingus, Christina trades her headband with the elder daughter in exchange for oral sex from her. The elder daughter persuades the younger daughter to lick her shoulder by bartering the headband. Later, the younger daughter volunteers to lick the elder again. The elder has nothing to offer in exchange, but the younger does not mind and experiments by licking other body parts. The father visits a dog-training facility and demands to have his dog returned. The trainer refuses because the dog has not finished its training, and asks: "Do we want an animal or a friend?" When the children are terrified by a stray cat in the garden, the son kills it with a pair of pruning shears. Deciding to take advantage of the incident, the father shreds his clothes, covers himself in fake blood, and tells his children that their unseen brother was killed by a cat, the most dangerous creature. After he teaches them to bark on all fours to fend off cats, the family holds a memorial service for the brother. Christina again barters for oral sex from the elder daughter. The daughter rejects her offer of hair gel and demands the Hollywood videotapes in her bag. She watches the films in secret and afterward recreates scenes and quotes their dialogue. When the father discovers the tapes, he beats her with one of them, then goes to Christina's flat and hits her with her VCR, cursing her future children to be corrupted by "bad influences". The parents decide that, with Christina no longer available, they will have their son choose one of his sisters as a new sexual partner. After fondling both sisters with his eyes closed, he chooses the elder. She is uncomfortable during their sex and afterward recites threatening dialogue from a Hollywood film to her brother. During a dance performance for the parents' wedding anniversary, the younger daughter stops to rest, but the elder continues, performing the choreography from the film '' Flashdance'', disturbing her parents. That night, she knocks out one of her dogteeth with a dumbbell and hides in the
boot A boot is a type of footwear. Most boots mainly cover the foot and the ankle, while some also cover some part of the lower calf. Some boots extend up the leg, sometimes as far as the knee or even the hip. Most boots have a heel that is cle ...
of her father's car. The father discovers her tooth fragments and searches for her fruitlessly. He drives to work the next day; the car sits outside the factory, unattended.


Cast

*
Christos Stergioglou Christos Stergioglou (; born 1952) is a Greek actor. He won the award for Best Actor at the 2002 Thessaloniki International Film Festival. He has appeared in more than 20 films since 1981. He currently stars in the Channel 4 sitcom '' Stath Lets ...
as father * Michelle Valley as mother *
Angeliki Papoulia Angeliki Papoulia ( gr, Αγγελική Παπούλια; born 1975) is a Greek actress and theatre director. In film, she is most notable for her roles in ''Dogtooth'', ''Alps'' and '' The Lobster'' by Yorgos Lanthimos, and '' A Blast'' and ...
as older daughter * Mary Tsoni as younger daughter * Christos Passalis as son * Anna Kalaitzidou as Christina


Production

''Dogtooth'' was the feature film début for Boo Productions, an
Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...
-based advertising company. The Greek Film Center supported the project with about
The euro sign () is the currency sign used for the euro, the official currency of the eurozone and unilaterally adopted by Kosovo and Montenegro. The design was presented to the public by the European Commission on 12 December 1996. It consists o ...
200,000 and much of the production was done with help from volunteers. Another €50,000 was offered by the production studio, bringing the overall budget to €250,000. Anna Kalaitzidou and Christos Passalis were stage actors who were cast after having worked with Lanthimos earlier. Mary Tsoni was not a professional actress, but a singer in a punk band. Lanthimos had an open approach to both acting and visual style and felt it would look fake if he involved himself too much in the details. Only when rehearsals started did he begin to develop an idea of the style in which the film should be shot: one where he tried to combine a realistic environment with "really strict framing and a cool, surreal look to go with the narrative".


Release

''Dogtooth'' premiered on 18 May 2009 at the
Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...
, and went on to screen at festivals such as
Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
and
Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...
. It was released in Greece on 11 November 2009 through Feelgood Entertainment. Verve Pictures picked up the British distribution rights and launched it on 23 April 2010. The American premiere was on 25 June 2010, managed by Kino International.


Reception

Greek critic Dimitris Danikas gave ''Dogtooth'' a rating of eight out of ten ("with enthusiasm"), calling it "black, surreal, nightmarish" and writing that ''Dogtooth'' is as important for Greek cinema as
Theodoros Angelopoulos Theodoros "Theo" Angelopoulos (; ; 27 April 1935 – 24 January 2012) was a Greek filmmaker, screenwriter and film producer. He dominated the Greek art film industry from 1975 on, and Angelopoulos was one of the most influential and widely re ...
's 1970 film '' Reconstitution''. Danikas added, "Lanthimos composes and goes from one level to another like a wildcat-creator, constantly and continuously maintaining the same rigorous style. Hence the aphasia; hence the uniformity; hence the submission and the scheduled mass culture; hence also the serial killer; hence, however, the disobedience, the anarchy. As I said at the beginning: ''Dogtooth'' has the surrealism of
Buñuel Buñuel is a town and municipality located in the province and autonomous community of Navarre, northern Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto ...
, the scalpel of Haneke, the underground horror of a thriller without the splatter. Perfect." Danikas characterized ''Dogtooth's'' Academy Award nomination as "the greatest Greek triumph of recent years." Columnist Dimitris Bouras, writing for ''
Kathimerini ''Kathimerini'' (Greek: Η Καθημερινή, pronounced kaθimeriˈni meaning ''The Daily'') is a daily, political and financial morning newspaper published in Athens. Its first edition was printed on September 15, 1919. and it is considered ...
'', mentioned "the beneficial effects that the prestigious award could have" and wrote that the nomination reveals three interesting facts: "1) in Greece we need to be extroverts (and not only in cinema), 2) exportable product is whatever has an identity, 3) ''Dogtooth''s nomination is like an investment – manna from the heaven of Hollywood for the developing Greek cinema."


International

, the film had a 93% approval rating from critics at
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, based on 68 reviews with an average rating of 7.70/10. The site's consensus reads: "It'll be too disturbing – and meandering – for some, but ''Dogtooth'' is as disturbing and startlingly original as modern filmmaking gets". On
Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, the film has a weighted average score of 73 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". ''
The Scotsman ''The Scotsman'' is a Scottish compact newspaper and daily news website headquartered in Edinburgh. First established as a radical political paper in 1817, it began daily publication in 1855 and remained a broadsheet until August 2004. Its par ...
''s Alistair Harkness hailed Lanthimos as "a bold new voice on the world cinema scene, someone who might soon be elevated to a similar position as those twin pillars of Euro provocation:
Lars von Trier Lars von Trier (''né'' Trier; 30 April 1956) is a Danish filmmaker, actor, and lyricist. Having garnered a reputation as a highly ambitious, polarizing filmmaker, he has been the subject of several controversies: Cannes, in addition to nominat ...
and
Michael Haneke Michael Haneke (; born 23 March 1942) is an Austrian film director and screenwriter. His work often examines social issues and depicts the feelings of estrangement experienced by individuals in modern society. Haneke has made films in French, G ...
", but added that the film is "not... designed simply to shock in the way von Trier's work often does,... nor does it have that annoyingly prescriptive, punitive air of superiority favoured by Haneke's films." Peter Bradshaw of ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' praised the filmmakers' technique, finding ''Dogtooth'' "superbly shot, with some deadpan, elegant compositions, and intentionally skewiff framings".
Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
(''
Chicago Sun-Times The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...
'') gave the film three out of four stars. He noted the director's "complete command of visuals and performances. His cinematography is like a series of family photographs of a family with something wrong with it. His dialogue sounds composed entirely of sentences memorized from tourist phrase books." Mark Olsen of the ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'' wrote, "All of the film's purposeful weirdness is conveyed with an unaffected simplicity that recalls the dead-aim haphazard compositions of photographer
William Eggleston William Eggleston (born July 27, 1939) is an American photographer. He is widely credited with increasing recognition for color photography as a legitimate artistic medium. Eggleston's books include ''William Eggleston's Guide'' (1976) and ''The ...
." He concluded, "as a film, it's pure and singular, but it's not quite fully formed enough to be what one could call truly visionary."
A. O. Scott Anthony Oliver Scott (born July 10, 1966) is an American journalist and cultural critic. He has been chief film critic for ''The New York Times'' since 2004, a title he shares with Manohla Dargis. Early life Scott was born on July 10, 1966 in ...
of ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' wrote that the film "at times seems as much an exercise in perversity as an examination of it" and "The static wide-screen compositions are beautiful and strange, with the heads and limbs of the characters frequently cropped. The light is gauzy and diffuse, helping to produce an atmosphere that is insistently and not always unpleasantly dreamlike. You might think of paintings by
Balthus Balthasar Klossowski de Rola (February 29, 1908 – February 18, 2001), known as Balthus, was a Polish-French modern artist. He is known for his erotically charged images of pubescent girls, but also for the refined, dreamlike quality of his image ...
or maybe
Alex Katz Alex Katz (born July 24, 1927) is an American figurative artist known for his paintings, sculptures, and prints. Early life and career Alex Katz was born July 24, 1927, to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, as the son of an émigré who ha ...
, though the implied stories in those pictures are more genuinely evocative and haunting than the actual narrative of ''Dogtooth''." Several reviewers, such as Harkness and Bradshaw, made comparisons to the 2008
Fritzl case The Fritzl case emerged in 2008, when a woman named Elisabeth Fritzl (born 6 April 1966) told police in the town of Amstetten, Lower Austria, Austria, that she had been held captive for 24 years by her father, Josef Fritzl (born 9 April 1935). J. ...
, although they noted that the screenplay was written before the case emerged. Scott, like Ebert, made references to
homeschooling Homeschooling or home schooling, also known as home education or elective home education (EHE), is the education of school-aged children at home or a variety of places other than a school. Usually conducted by a parent, tutor, or an onlin ...
. Resemblances have been noted to the 1972 Mexican film '' The Castle of Purity''. The film's larger meaning eluded easy expression. Scott called the film "a conversation piece. Though the conversation may... be more along the lines of: 'What was that?' 'I don't know. Weird.' 'Yeah.' hudder 'Weird.'" Olsen saw ''Dogtooth''s substance as "part enigma, part allegory and even part sci-fi in its creation of a completely alternate reality." While Ebert found a "message...: God help children whose parents insanely demand unquestioning obedience to their deranged standards.... me have even described the film as a comedy. I wasn't laughing." For Bradshaw, the film investigates "the essential strangeness of something society insists is the benchmark of normality: the family, a walled city state with its own autocratic rule and untellable secrets." Harkness noted the "absolute mockery the situation makes of the perfect family ideal" where "Lanthimos isn't interested in making specific political or social points and he refuses to offer any clarifying backstory"; he found ''Dogtooth''s oddness "as organic and playful as its impact is incisor sharp." Filmmaker
David Lynch David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American filmmaker, visual artist and actor. A recipient of an Academy Honorary Award in 2019, Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, and the César Award for Be ...
called ''Dogtooth'' "a fantastic comedy" in a 2012 interview.


Accolades

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou ended the Cabinet meeting on 25 January 2011 by saying, "The news that the film ''Dogtooth'' by Yorgos Lanthimos is nominated for Best Foreign Language Film goes far beyond the world of cinema, arts and culture. It concerns the whole country, its people, the new generation of artists who follow the motto 'Yes, we can do it' during difficult times." He continued, "I won't say that the news shows that miracles happen, because the success of Yorgos Lanthimos is based on hard work, talent and his endless potential. Features that characterize the creative forces which lead Greece to a new era; forces which deserve our support and they will have it. Bravo Yorgos." The Greek Film Committee unanimously chose ''Dogtooth'' to represent Greece at the Oscars.


Potential influences

In 1970, Arturo Ripstein made a very similar film, '' The Castle of Purity'', in which a man keeps his family isolated, the brother and sister have an unusually close connection, and the sister is the one to break the impasse with the outside world. According to Ripstein, his film was based on a case that appeared in newspapers in the 1950s of a man who isolated his family and did not allow them to leave. "There was a lot of talk about the case when I was a little boy." Two works came from that case; a novel by
Luis Spota Luis Mario Cayetano Spota Saavedra Ruotti Castañares (13 July 1925, Mexico City — 20 January 1985) was a Mexican writer, journalist, boxing official and film director. Although he never finished primary school, Spota became a highly successful ...
, ''La Carcajadas del Gato'', and a play by
Sergio Galindo Sergio Galindo (September 2, 1926 – January 3, 1993) was a Mexican novelist and short story writer. He was born in Xalapa in the state of Veracruz, a region of Mexico that figures prominently in much of his writing. His most widely acclaimed n ...
, "Los Motivos del Lobos". Actress
Dolores del Río María de los Dolores Asúnsolo y López Negrete (3 August 1904 – 11 April 1983), known professionally as Dolores del Río (), was a Mexican actress. With a career spanning more than 50 years, she is regarded as the first major female Latin Am ...
was interested in the rights to the play and contacted Luis Buñuel, who declined, but recommended his protege, Ripstein. "Dolores del Río called and said, 'I would like to make an adaptation of the play', and I said, 'I would prefer to go directly to the source and take the case from the newspapers'."


See also

*
List of Greek submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film Greece has submitted films for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. The award is handed out annually by the United States Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to a feature-length motion picture produced outside the United ...
*
List of submissions to the 83rd Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film This is a list of submissions to the 83rd Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has invited the film industries of various countries to submit their best film for the Academy Award for Bes ...


References


External links

* * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Dogtooth 2009 films 2009 drama films 2009 independent films 2009 LGBT-related films Greek drama films Greek LGBT-related films Films set in Greece Films shot in Athens 2000s Greek-language films Films directed by Yorgos Lanthimos Films about dysfunctional families Films shot in Greece Films about child abuse Incest in film Lesbian-related films 2000s psychological drama films