Dogtooth: Surprisingly Avant-Garde For an Oscar Nominee

It’s a real surprise that “Dogtooth” is nominated for the Best Foreign-Language Film Oscar. The Academy typically ignores avant-garde film, but for some reason “Dogtooth” made the cut this year. Nothing is so unpredictable (incomprehensible?) lately as the Academy’s Foreign-Language category.

“Dogtooth” has a stunningly original and radical look and feel. It looks more interesting than it actually is, however. I found myself entranced by the innovative cinematography and art direction much more than I was by the story. Being highly avant-garde, the film could be interpreted in many different ways. I saw it primarily as a parody of the bourgeois family, particularly anxiety about the molding and protecting of adolescents.

“Dogtooth,” which was made in Greece by a young writer/director named Giorgos Lanthimos, tells the story of a family that has isolated itself from the rest of the world. Only the father leaves the compound each day to go to work. He appears to be a middle manager in an ordinary factory. Mom and the three teenage kids, never leave the grounds. It appears that the teenagers have actually never left. They are home-schooled, with bizarre lessons teaching them the wrong words for things. At dinner, one child asks for the salt shaker by saying, “Mom, can you please pass the telephone?” They are taught to be terrified by the outside world, including any animals that invade the back yard.

They also have their sexuality strangely molded. The father periodically brings home a young woman to have sex with his son. He and this young woman methodically go through intercourse as if it’s a lesson at school. There are hints that this is to help shape the boy's sexual orientation.

The extremely flat surface of the film is gradually broken as the oldest child starts to bridle under the constant restraints imposed by her parents. One fascinating expression of this comes in a wild improvised dance she performs before the family after dinner one night. This tension builds into a dramatic and slightly gruesome final sequence the details of which I won’t reveal.

“Dogtooth” is engaging and creative. It certainly signals the arrival of a brash new talent in European cinema, and the Cannes Film Festival is to be praised for bringing attention to Lanthimos. (“Dogtooth” won the 2009 festival’s top prize in the Un Certain Regard category, which focuses on the avant-garde.) But at this point I’d say that Lanthimos only shows promise. He’s got to work on more profound story concepts. He’s got a brilliant visual eye, but cinema isn’t only a visual medium. It’s first and foremost a story-telling medium. If he doesn’t improve in this area, he will only be a glorified music-video director.