Dogtooth review

Words cannot possibly do Dogtooth, one of this year's Oscar nominees for Best Foreign Film, justice.  It's far too abstract a movie to accurately portray with our limited vocabulary (especially when all of our words mean exactly what they mean), and were I able to explain it with any sort of precision, anyone reading this review would likely never dare go near it.  It's the sort of bizarre black comedy that makes you feel guilty for watching it, but like a particularly bloody car wreck, it's impossible to look away.  And this is no ordinary car wreck, but one involving incestuous siblings and a hammer-wielding cat.

Put simply, Dogtooth chronicles a family living in isolation.  Similar to The Village, the parents have created a gated world for their children in which words that might compromise the illusion are redefined and strange games occupy the children while their father is away at work (because he has a car, which is the only safe way to go beyond the gate).  The persistent lies are disturbing in a basic sense, but most of them are too hilarious to really bother the viewer.  The stellar screenplay finds comedy in the darkest corners of humanity, reveling in pure silliness, the curiosity of violence, and sex in its various forms (and for its various reasons).

With the world locked away from them, the children's experiences of everyday encounters take on a hilarious air of misunderstanding and irrationality.  A cat appearing in the garden is a cause for alarm, and arguments ensue over who will retrieve an airplane if it falls from the sky.  Moments such as these serve to make the children endearing even as they demonstrate how awful, even sad, their lives are.  It's easy to empathize with these young characters (played to weird perfection by Aggeliki Papoulia, Hristos Passalis, and the adorable Mary Tsoni), despite the fragmented growth that stems from their too-sheltered upbringing.

The characters' trapped lifestyle is mirrored brilliantly by the invasively static camerawork that often allows characters to go partially or completely out of the frame.  During dialogue scenes, characters are sometimes not shown, but the audience is never in doubt as to who is talking.  In this bubble, there is no mystery, no surprise.  Everything is controlled and routine, to the point that the characters' engagement is only to the degree of what is expected of them.  Even the camera is disinterested in what happens, causing a friction with the viewer, who is likely to be utterly compelled by this bizarre world that embraces, and redefines, the concept of a dysfunctional family.

Dogtooth's characters have no right (or perhaps simply no means) to grow, so it's interesting to see the subtle ways that they do, such as the way the children come to use sex and violence to claim some control over their world.  The shift from senseless violence to purposeful (yet unnecessary) self-mutilation serves as a sort of emotional breakthrough, and while it seems to cater to the lies the children have been fed all their lives, it also serves as a gateway to liberation, and in that way the brutal becomes beautiful.  This uncomfortable subtlety will be lost on more squeamish viewers, but Dogtooth's strength lies in the intricacy of its more human moments, even more so than in its broader comedic strokes.

By no means an easy watch, Dogtooth is still well worth seeking out.  It's a deeply, darkly compelling look at a family that is bound by lies, but perhaps, too, by love, in some form or another.  The motivation is never quite clear, but it's a welcome note of mystery in a film that is so blatantly forthright and transparent.