If I had to pick one movie from last year and say it’s my favorite it would probably be Dogtooth from director Yorgos Lanthimos. You’ve already heard from us about Dogtooth in our favorites of 2010 post and it was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.
It’s an amazing, unabashed, art film that is a pitch perfect study of nature vs. nurture and a lot more. FAIR WARNING: This is a challenging film with some very darkly comedic moments that veers toward discomfort. Not to worry though, it’s all in service of a really great story.
Check out the trailer below:
SYNOPSIS
A hyper-stylized mixture of physical violence and verbal comedy, Dogtooth is a darkly funny look at three teenagers confined to their parents’ isolated country estate and kept under strict rule and regimen — an inscrutable scenario that suggests a warped experiment in social conditioning and control. Terrorized into submission by their father, the children spend their days devising their own games and learning an invented vocabulary (a salt shaker is a “telephone,” an armchair is “the sea”) — until a trusted outsider, brought in to satisfy the son’s libidinal urges, plants the seeds of rebellion by trading VHS tapes for sexual favors. (partially adapted from the New Directors/New Films catalog)
ACCLAIM
“Somewhere up in the heaven he didn’t believe in, Buñuel is doubtless smiling approvingly.”
- Gavin Smith, Film Comment“The geometric framing and odd, almost robotic performances place this in the realms of science fiction more than human drama, but its insights into the anomalies of power, influence and manipulation are penetrating to say the least. Highly recommended.”
- Time Out London“Dogtooth is a delightfully twisted little fable from Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos, with all the markings of a cult classic. Lanthimos elevates the material far above the mere exploitative, constructing a uniquely surreal yet oddly believable alternate universe amidst that Lynchian jungle of menace, the suburban backyard.”
- Seth Abramovic, Movieline“Dogtooth is a darkly comic and imaginative film and a deserved winner of the Prix Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival.”
- Arion McNicoll, TheTime
