It’s probably the weirdest film of the year. Dogtooth is a dysfunctional domestic drama from Greece in which three adult children live in a kind of arrested childhood in an hermetic, cloistered world that their parents have created to glue the family together. The mother teaches them alternative definitions for common words: a “telephone” means a saltcellar, an “excursion” is a durable flooring material; a “motorway” is a very strong wind. The father keeps his children safe within the walls of their home with a combination of creative corporal punishment and a rigorously instilled terror of pet cats. It’s brilliant, dark and disconcertingly funny.

The director Giorgios Lanthimos, a young-looking 36-year-old with a wispy apology of a beard, explains the idea behind the film. It is, he says, a response to the way that the traditional family model has evolved and changed, and to the idea that children are increasingly under siege from corruptive outside forces. “I thought, what would someone do if he really wanted to keep his family together for ever? Keep the family as he knows it, in a traditional way, thinking that he is doing the best. So I came up with this story of the parents raising their children away from any other influence.” It can be viewed, he adds, as a comment on the traditional Greek family. “Families stay closer, children stay with their parents until they are really old. But it could also be a universal story as well — anyone in the world can relate.”… Continue reading