Dogtooth [Blu-ray]

Dogtooth [Blu-ray] review



Winner of Un Certain regard at Cannes A mother and father, desperate to shelter their three children from the outside world, create a self styled utopia inside the walls of their secluded compound. The three children have never ventured outside and spend their days being educated and entertained within the limits of a strict and suppressive system concocted by their father. So far removed are they from the real world, they have their own vocabulary and believe cats to be dangerous wild man eating predators, aeroplanes flying overhead to be toys and small yellow flowers to be zombies. When the father invites a trusted outsider into their home to service his son's sexual urges, the domestic balance is disturbed and the protective bubble surrounding their lives soon implodes.


Biting satire
A word of warning - Dogtooth is a rather disturbing film resting on an uneasy mixture of comedy, satire and surrealism that is likely to provoke incomprehension and revulsion in the viewer over the course of its rather unsettling 90-odd minutes. So don't go there unless you want to be shaken up a little. Then again, that's precisely the aim of the film, to get you out of your comfort zone and confront a few unpleasant truths, and Greek director Giorgos Lanthimos ensures that there is plenty given here to think about.

The target of the film's satire isn't too difficult to identify as being that of the family unit and particularly the damage that can be inflicted upon it when the heads of the evidently dysfunctional family are shown to be somewhat disturbed individuals. Whether they belong to some kind of religious cult is never quite made clear, but the mother and father certainly entertain some unusual ideas about how to bring-up their three children, a boy and two girls of young adult age. Keeping them captive at home, they set the children unusual tasks to perform and fill their heads with misinformation about a world outside that they clearly have never experienced for themselves. The only contact with the outside world they have is with a woman that the father has engaged to assist the eldest boy with his growing sexual urges, but curiosity about what lies outside eventually overcomes the fears that have been instilled in one of the girls.

I say that it's easy to identify the family as being the subject of the film's satire, but it's necessary to look beyond that and consider what the film tells us about social conditioning, about the damaging effects of withholding truth and information, and apply that to those who also look after our interests at a higher level in determining what is good for us to know. The limitations need not necessarily even be that of some government, religious organisation or sinister authority, but rather, conditioned by years of tradition, superstition, religious beliefs and a tendency not to look too far beyond our own doorsteps, those fears of the unknown can come from within, causing a distortion of the truth and reality that can have a profound effect on society as a whole.

Such considerations are likely to come to mind much later after watching the film since they are not explored directly within the film itself. Dogtooth rather necessarily keeps within its own hermetic little universe of this particularly dysfunctional family and carries its activities through to their inevitably disturbing conclusions, but so effectively does it keep the viewer held within its twisted little view of the world, that emerging from it will inevitably lead us to consider the wider implications of our conventional view of reality.

Dogtooth [Blu-ray] Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos Price: £11.19 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Delivery. Details Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Dispatched from and sold by Amazon.co.uk 12 new or used available from £8.96 Average customer review:

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