Dogtooth (film)
Encyclopedia
Dogtooth is a 2009 film directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
about a husband and wife who keep their children imprisoned on their property into adulthood. The Greek drama stars Christos Stergioglou, Michelle Valley, Aggeliki Papoulia, Mary Tsoni and Christos Passalis. Dogtooth is Lanthimos' second feature film as solo director. The film won the Prix Un Certain Regard
at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival
and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film
at the 83rd Academy Awards
.
" is "a small yellow flower," and that "sea" is a chair. The parents promise that each child will be ready to venture outside the compound once she or he has lost a dogtooth. Although the children are told they have a brother just on the other side of the barrier, he never appears.
The only non-family member to come into the house is Christina, a young woman who works as a security guard at the father's factory. She is driven by the father to the compound – travelling both ways blindfolded – where she performs sexual favors for the son. Dissatisfied with his preference for intercourse, Christina seeks oral sex from the elder daughter in exchange for a headband. The elder daughter obliges but does not recognize the significance of performing cunnilingus
. Later, she gives the headband to her younger sister, in exchange for being licked on the shoulder, which is marked by an unexplained scar.
The parents have tricked the children into believing that overhead planes are merely toys. They allow the children to search for toy planes that they have planted on the grounds, and the child that finds the toy owns it. One day the older daughter finds her brother playing with her plane; she retaliates by cutting his arm with a kitchen knife.
The father visits a dog training facility and demands to have his dog returned. The trainer refuses because the dog has only reached the second stage of a five-stage training. He lectures the father on the merits of retaining a dog in training until its training is complete, and warns against the untimely cessation of training. He poses the question: "Do we want an animal or a friend?" The father is impatient to receive the dog, as he expresses to his wife. When the arrival of the dog is considered imminent, the parents tell the children that the mother will soon give birth to "two children and a dog", but promise that the birth of the children can be forgone if the son and daughters show improvement in their behavior.
The siblings are terrified by the appearance of a stray cat in the garden. Considering it a threat, the son ambushes and kills it with a pair of pruning shears. The parents decide to take advantage of the incident. The father shreds his clothes, covers himself in fake blood, and comes home, where he tells his children that their unseen brother was mauled to death by a cat, the most fearsome creature. The children are taught to get down on all fours and bark maniacally as a precaution against cats. A memorial service is held for the brother, in which the family members lob flowers over the fence, in mourning.
Christina is again brought to the compound to perform her services and she once more requests oral sex from the elder daughter. However, the daughter rejects Christina's offer of hair gel as a reward, choosing instead the two films in Christina's bag (Rocky
and Jaws
). Christina refuses to hand over the films, but eventually agrees under threat of blackmail
. The elder daughter watches the films at night, and they have a significant influence on her. She recreates scenes from the films and quotes them in her free moments. The father finds the videotapes, fashions one into a weapon with packing tape, and uses it to beat his daughter's head. Then he goes to Christina's flat, removes her VCR player from the wall and knocks her off her chair with it. As he leaves, he curses her future children to be corrupted by "bad influences."
In the middle of the night, the son's knee is injured with a hammer and he accuses his younger sister. She claims he was attacked by a cat with a hammer and the father accepts her story. The parents quickly decide that, with Christina no longer available, they should allow the son to choose one of the daughters as a replacement. After fondling both sisters simultaneously in the bath with his eyes closed, he chooses the elder, who is later dressed and prepared by the mother for the sexual encounter. The elder daughter is visibly uncomfortable during intercourse, and afterwards recites a threatening passage from Rocky to her brother.
The elder daughter's agitation begins to show during the children's dance performance staged for the parents' wedding anniversary. She dances the choreography from Flashdance
to exhaustion and then devours her dessert. Later, in the bathroom, she smashes her face with a dumbbell to knock out a dogtooth. Smiling and bloody, she runs undetected through the garden and to the car, where she lets herself into the trunk
(boot) and closes it over her. The father discovers her blood and tooth fragments in the sink that night. He runs outside the compound and searches in the tall grass while the other three remain just inside the grounds, barking like dogs on all fours. In the morning, the son and younger daughter hold each other and kiss, while the father drives to work, unwittingly carrying the elder daughter in her hiding place. The father goes inside. The car sits outside, unattended, but the daughter remains in the trunk.
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, as he thought it would look fake if he involved too much in the details. It wasn't until the rehearsals started that he began to develop the idea of how the film should be shot, a style where he tried to combine a realistic environment with "really strict framing and a cool, surreal look to go with the narrative".
. It was released in Greece on 11 November the same year 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.
; 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
, 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
, refers to "the beneficial effects that the prestigious award could have" and believes 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."
. The Scotsman
s Alistair Harkness hailed director 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
and Michael Haneke
," although 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
praised the filmmakers' technique, finding it "superbly shot, with some deadpan, elegant compositions, and intentionally skewiff framings". Roger Ebert
(Chicago Sun-Times
) 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
said "All of the film's purposeful weirdness is conveyed with an unaffected simplicity that recalls the dead-aim haphazard compositions of photographer William Eggleston
." He concluded that "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
of The New York Times
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
or maybe Alex Katz
, 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
, although they pointed out that the screenplay had been written before the case emerged. Scott, like Ebert, made references to homeschooling
.
The film's larger meanings 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.' [shudder]. 'Weird.'" Olsen saw Dogtooths 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.... [S]ome 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 notes 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 Dogtooths oddness "as organic and playful as its impact is incisor sharp."
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 by saying "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 film was chosen unanimously by the Greek Film Committee to represent Greece at the Oscars.
Yorgos Lanthimos
Yorgos Lanthimos is a Greek filmmaker and theatre director.Yorgos Lanthimos was born in Athens. He studied directing for Film and Television at the Stavrakos Film School in Athens. Through the 90’s he directed a series of videos for Greek dance-theater companies...
about a husband and wife who keep their children imprisoned on their property into adulthood. The Greek drama stars Christos Stergioglou, Michelle Valley, Aggeliki Papoulia, Mary Tsoni and Christos Passalis. Dogtooth is Lanthimos' second feature film as solo director. The film won the Prix Un Certain Regard
Un Certain Regard
Un Certain Regard is a section of the Cannes Film Festival's Official Selection. It is run at the Salle Debussy, parallel to the competition for the Palme d'Or.This section was introduced in 1978 by Gilles Jacob...
at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival
2009 Cannes Film Festival
The 62nd annual Cannes Film Festival was held from May 13 to May 24, 2009. French actress Isabelle Huppert was the President of the Jury. It was announced on March 19, 2009, that Pixar's film Up would open the festival...
and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film
Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film
The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the Academy Awards of Merit, popularly known as the Oscars, handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
at the 83rd Academy Awards
83rd Academy Awards
The 83rd Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences , honored the best films of 2010 and took place February 27, 2011, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles beginning at 5:30 p.m. PST / 8:30 p.m. EST. During the ceremony, Academy Awards ...
.
Plot
A married couple and their three young adult children, a son and two daughters, live in a large compound with a garden and a swimming pool. A tall fence surrounds the property and the children have never been on the other side of it, for their parents have kept them unaware of the outside world, even of the existence of the telephone. They are taught different meanings for everyday words. For example, they are told that a "zombieZombie
Zombie is a term used to denote an animated corpse brought back to life by mystical means such as witchcraft. The term is often figuratively applied to describe a hypnotized person bereft of consciousness and self-awareness, yet ambulant and able to respond to surrounding stimuli...
" is "a small yellow flower," and that "sea" is a chair. The parents promise that each child will be ready to venture outside the compound once she or he has lost a dogtooth. Although the children are told they have a brother just on the other side of the barrier, he never appears.
The only non-family member to come into the house is Christina, a young woman who works as a security guard at the father's factory. She is driven by the father to the compound – travelling both ways blindfolded – where she performs sexual favors for the son. Dissatisfied with his preference for intercourse, Christina seeks oral sex from the elder daughter in exchange for a headband. The elder daughter obliges but does not recognize the significance of performing cunnilingus
Cunnilingus
Cunnilingus is an oral sex act performed on a female. It involves the use by a sex partner of the mouth, lips and tongue to stimulate the female's clitoris, vulva, or vagina...
. Later, she gives the headband to her younger sister, in exchange for being licked on the shoulder, which is marked by an unexplained scar.
The parents have tricked the children into believing that overhead planes are merely toys. They allow the children to search for toy planes that they have planted on the grounds, and the child that finds the toy owns it. One day the older daughter finds her brother playing with her plane; she retaliates by cutting his arm with a kitchen knife.
The father visits a dog training facility and demands to have his dog returned. The trainer refuses because the dog has only reached the second stage of a five-stage training. He lectures the father on the merits of retaining a dog in training until its training is complete, and warns against the untimely cessation of training. He poses the question: "Do we want an animal or a friend?" The father is impatient to receive the dog, as he expresses to his wife. When the arrival of the dog is considered imminent, the parents tell the children that the mother will soon give birth to "two children and a dog", but promise that the birth of the children can be forgone if the son and daughters show improvement in their behavior.
The siblings are terrified by the appearance of a stray cat in the garden. Considering it a threat, the son ambushes and kills it with a pair of pruning shears. The parents decide to take advantage of the incident. The father shreds his clothes, covers himself in fake blood, and comes home, where he tells his children that their unseen brother was mauled to death by a cat, the most fearsome creature. The children are taught to get down on all fours and bark maniacally as a precaution against cats. A memorial service is held for the brother, in which the family members lob flowers over the fence, in mourning.
Christina is again brought to the compound to perform her services and she once more requests oral sex from the elder daughter. However, the daughter rejects Christina's offer of hair gel as a reward, choosing instead the two films in Christina's bag (Rocky
Rocky
Rocky is a 1976 American sports drama film directed by John G. Avildsen and both written by and starring Sylvester Stallone. It tells the rags to riches American Dream story of Rocky Balboa, an uneducated but kind-hearted debt collector for a loan shark in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania...
and Jaws
Jaws (film)
Jaws is a 1975 American horror-thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's novel of the same name. In the story, the police chief of Amity Island, a fictional summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from a giant man-eating great white shark by closing the beach,...
). Christina refuses to hand over the films, but eventually agrees under threat of blackmail
Blackmail
In common usage, blackmail is a crime involving threats to reveal substantially true or false information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates unless a demand is met. It may be defined as coercion involving threats of physical harm, threat of criminal prosecution, or threats...
. The elder daughter watches the films at night, and they have a significant influence on her. She recreates scenes from the films and quotes them in her free moments. The father finds the videotapes, fashions one into a weapon with packing tape, and uses it to beat his daughter's head. Then he goes to Christina's flat, removes her VCR player from the wall and knocks her off her chair with it. As he leaves, he curses her future children to be corrupted by "bad influences."
In the middle of the night, the son's knee is injured with a hammer and he accuses his younger sister. She claims he was attacked by a cat with a hammer and the father accepts her story. The parents quickly decide that, with Christina no longer available, they should allow the son to choose one of the daughters as a replacement. After fondling both sisters simultaneously in the bath with his eyes closed, he chooses the elder, who is later dressed and prepared by the mother for the sexual encounter. The elder daughter is visibly uncomfortable during intercourse, and afterwards recites a threatening passage from Rocky to her brother.
The elder daughter's agitation begins to show during the children's dance performance staged for the parents' wedding anniversary. She dances the choreography from Flashdance
Flashdance
Another song used in the film, "Maniac", was also nominated for an Academy Award. It was written by Michael Sembello and Dennis Matkosky, and was inspired by the 1980 horror film Maniac. The lyrics about a killer on the loose were rewritten so that it could be used in Flashdance...
to exhaustion and then devours her dessert. Later, in the bathroom, she smashes her face with a dumbbell to knock out a dogtooth. Smiling and bloody, she runs undetected through the garden and to the car, where she lets herself into the trunk
Trunk (automobile)
The trunk or boot of an automobile or car is the vehicle's main storage, luggage, or cargo compartment. Trunk is used in North American English and Jamaican English; boot is used elsewhere in the English speaking world. Trunk is also primarily used in many non-English speaking regions, such as...
(boot) and closes it over her. The father discovers her blood and tooth fragments in the sink that night. He runs outside the compound and searches in the tall grass while the other three remain just inside the grounds, barking like dogs on all fours. In the morning, the son and younger daughter hold each other and kiss, while the father drives to work, unwittingly carrying the elder daughter in her hiding place. The father goes inside. The car sits outside, unattended, but the daughter remains in the trunk.
Cast
- Christos Stergioglou as father
- Michelle Valley as mother
- Aggeliki Papoulia 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-based advertising company. The Greek Film Center supported the project with about €Euro
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...
200,000 and much of the production was done with help from volunteers. Another €
Euro
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...
50,000 was offered by the production studio, bringing the overall budget to €
Euro
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...
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
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
band. Lanthimos had an open approach to both acting and visual style, as he thought it would look fake if he involved too much in the details. It wasn't until the rehearsals started that he began to develop the idea of how the film should be shot, a style where he tried to combine a realistic environment with "really strict framing and a cool, surreal look to go with the narrative".
Release
The film premiered on 18 May at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival2009 Cannes Film Festival
The 62nd annual Cannes Film Festival was held from May 13 to May 24, 2009. French actress Isabelle Huppert was the President of the Jury. It was announced on March 19, 2009, that Pixar's film Up would open the festival...
. It was released in Greece on 11 November the same year 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.
In Greece
In its home country, Greek critic Dimitris Danikas gave the film a rating of eight out of ten ("with enthusiasm") and characterizes it as "black, surreal, nightmarish." He believes that Dogtooth is as important for Greek cinema as Theodoros Angelopoulos' 1970 film Reconstruction. He goes on to say "Lanthimos composes and goes from one level to another like a wildcat-creator, constantly and continuously maintaining the same rigorous style. Hence the aphasiaAphasia
Aphasia is an impairment of language ability. This class of language disorder ranges from having difficulty remembering words to being completely unable to speak, read, or write....
; 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
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
, the scalpel of Haneke
Michael Haneke
Michael Haneke is a German born Austrian filmmaker and writer best known for his bleak and disturbing style. His films often document problems and failures in modern society. Haneke has worked in television‚ theatre and cinema. He is also known for raising social issues in his work...
, 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
I Kathimerini is a daily morning newspaper published in Athens. It is published in the Greek language, as well as in an abridged English-language edition. The English edition is sold separately in the United States and as a supplement to the International Herald Tribune in Greece and Cyprus. On 2...
, refers to "the beneficial effects that the prestigious award could have" and believes 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
Manna
Manna or Manna wa Salwa , sometimes or archaically spelled mana, is the name of an edible substance that God provided for the Israelites during their travels in the desert according to the Bible.It was said to be sweet to the taste, like honey....
from the heaven of Hollywood for the developing Greek cinema."
International
As of 2011 February the film had a 93% approval rating from critics at Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
. The Scotsman
The Scotsman
The Scotsman is a British newspaper, published in Edinburgh.As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 38,423, down from about 100,000 in the 1980s....
s Alistair Harkness hailed director 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
Lars von Trier is a Danish film director and screenwriter. He is closely associated with the Dogme 95 collective, although his own films have taken a variety of different approaches, and have frequently received strongly divided critical opinion....
and Michael Haneke
Michael Haneke
Michael Haneke is a German born Austrian filmmaker and writer best known for his bleak and disturbing style. His films often document problems and failures in modern society. Haneke has worked in television‚ theatre and cinema. He is also known for raising social issues in his work...
," although 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
Peter Bradshaw
Peter Bradshaw is a British writer and film critic. He was educated at Cambridge University, where he was President of Footlights.Bradshaw is a film critic for The Guardian...
of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
praised the filmmakers' technique, finding it "superbly shot, with some deadpan, elegant compositions, and intentionally skewiff framings". Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
(Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
) 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
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
said "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
William Eggleston , is an American photographer. He is widely credited with increasing recognition for color photography as a legitimate artistic medium to display in art galleries—which, until the 1970s, often tended to privilege work by photographers making black-and-white prints.- Early years...
." He concluded that "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
A. O. Scott
Anthony Oliver Scott, known as A. O. Scott , is an American journalist and critic. He is a chief film critic for The New York Times, along with Manohla Dargis.-Background and education:...
of The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
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
Balthus
Balthasar Klossowski de Rola , best known as Balthus, was an esteemed but controversial Polish-French modern artist....
or maybe Alex Katz
Alex Katz
Alex Katz is an American figurative artist associated with the Pop art movement. In particular, he is known for his paintings, sculptures, and prints and is represented by numerous galleries internationally.-Life and work:...
, 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
Fritzl case
The Fritzl case emerged in April 2008 when a 42-year-old woman, Elisabeth Fritzl , stated to police in the town of Amstetten, Austria, that she had been held captive for 24 years in a concealed corridor part of the basement area of the family home, a condominium-style apartment complex built by her...
, although they pointed out that the screenplay had been written before the case emerged. Scott, like Ebert, made references to homeschooling
Homeschooling
Homeschooling or homeschool is the education of children at home, typically by parents but sometimes by tutors, rather than in other formal settings of public or private school...
.
The film's larger meanings 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.' [shudder]. 'Weird.'" Olsen saw Dogtooths 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.... [S]ome 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 notes 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 Dogtooths oddness "as organic and playful as its impact is incisor sharp."
Accolades
Greek Prime Minister George PapandreouGeorge Papandreou
Georgios A. Papandreou , commonly anglicised to George and shortened to Γιώργος in Greek, is a Greek politician who served as Prime Minister of Greece following his party's victory in the 2009 legislative election...
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 by saying "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 film was chosen unanimously by the Greek Film Committee to represent Greece at the Oscars.
| Event | Category | Winner/Nominee | Won |
|---|---|---|---|
| Academy Awards 83rd Academy Awards The 83rd Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences , honored the best films of 2010 and took place February 27, 2011, at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles beginning at 5:30 p.m. PST / 8:30 p.m. EST. During the ceremony, Academy Awards ... |
Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film The Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film is one of the Academy Awards of Merit, popularly known as the Oscars, handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences... |
Yorgos Lanthimos Yorgos Lanthimos Yorgos Lanthimos is a Greek filmmaker and theatre director.Yorgos Lanthimos was born in Athens. He studied directing for Film and Television at the Stavrakos Film School in Athens. Through the 90’s he directed a series of videos for Greek dance-theater companies... |
No |
| British Independent Film Awards British Independent Film Awards 2010 The 13th British Independent Film Awards, was held on 5 December 2010 at The Brewery in West London, honouring the best British independent films of 2010.-Best British Independent Film:* The King's Speech* Four Lions* Kick-Ass... |
Best Foreign Film | Yorgos Lanthimos | No |
| Cannes Film Festival 2009 Cannes Film Festival The 62nd annual Cannes Film Festival was held from May 13 to May 24, 2009. French actress Isabelle Huppert was the President of the Jury. It was announced on March 19, 2009, that Pixar's film Up would open the festival... |
Prix Un Certain Regard | Yorgos Lanthimos | Yes |
| Prix de la Jeunesse | Yorgos Lanthimos | Yes | |
| Dublin International Film Festival Jameson Dublin International Film Festival The Jameson Dublin International Film Festival is a film festival that is held annually in February over the course of ten days in Dublin, Republic of Ireland-History:The Jameson Dublin International Film Festival was established in 2003... |
Dublin Film Critics Award | Yorgos Lanthimos | Yes |
| Estoril Film Festival | Grande Premio | Yorgos Lanthimos | Yes |
| Greek Film Academy Awards | Best Feature Film | Yorgos Lanthimos | Yes |
| Best Director | Yorgos Lanthimos | Yes | |
| Best Screenplay | Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou | Yes | |
| Best Actress | Aggeliki Papoulia | No | |
| Best Actor | Christos Sterioglou | No | |
| Best Supporting Actor | Christos Passalis | Yes | |
| Best Post-Production | Yorgos Mavropsaridis | Yes | |
| Award for Special Effects and Film Innovation | George and Roulis Alahouzos | No | |
| Ljubljana International Film Festival Ljubljana International Film Festival The Ljubljana International Film Festival is an international film festival established in 1990 and held annually in Ljubljana, Slovenia.... |
Kingfisher Award | Yorgos Lanthimos | Yes |
| Mar del Plata Film Festival Mar del Plata Film Festival The Mar del Plata International Film Festival is an international film festival that takes place every November in the city of Mar del Plata, Argentina... |
Best Film | Yorgos Lanthimos | No |
| Montréal Festival of New Cinema Festival du Nouveau Cinéma The Festival du Nouveau Cinéma was known as the Montreal Festival of New Cinema and New Media until 2004. Founded in 1971, by Claude Chamberlan and Dimitri Eipides, it is an annual independent film festival held in Montreal and features independent films from around the world... |
Feature Film Award | Yorgos Lanthimos | Yes |
| RiverRun International Film Festival RiverRun International Film Festival The RiverRun International Film Festival is a regional film festival held annually each spring in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The festival is a 5013 non-profit organization and presents a variety of feature-length and short films from all genres, and also presents special events, regional... |
Best Director | Yorgos Lanthimos | Yes |
| Sarajevo Film Festival Sarajevo Film Festival The Sarajevo Film Festival is the premier and largest film festival in the Balkans, and is one of the largest in Europe. It was founded in Sarajevo in 1995 during the siege of Sarajevo, and brings international and local celebrities to Sarajevo every year. It is held in August and showcases an... |
Special Prize of the Jury | Yorgos Lanthimos | Yes |
| Heart of Sarajevo (Best Actress) | Aggeliki Papoulia and Mary Tsoni | Yes | |
| Sitges Film Festival | Best Motion Picture Fantastic Award | Yorgos Lanthimos | Yes |
| Citizen Kane Citizen Kane Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film... Award for Best Directorial Revelation |
Yorgos Lanthimos | Yes | |
| Best Film | Yorgos Lanthimos | No | |
| Stockholm International Film Festival Stockholm International Film Festival The Stockholm International Film Festival is an annual film festival held in Stockholm, Sweden. It was launched in 1990 and has been held every year in the second half of November... |
Bronze Horse | Yorgos Lanthimos | Yes |