Dogtooth 4K 2009

Greek cinema has become almost mythical in recent years. It is very rare for Greeks to delight us with high-quality, relevant films. Latimos' film is a breath of fresh air against this bleak backdrop. Last year, Dogtooth even made waves at Cannes, winning the top prize in the Un Certain Regard competition and earning rave reviews from critics around the world.

Latimos' debut film can be viewed on two levels. On a micro level, it is a very caustic sketch of the life of an “ideal” family, in which children obey their parents unquestioningly and parents have complete power over their children. It is a kind of dystopia in miniature. The director seems to be conducting an experiment: is such a family model possible? Yes, it is. Is it viable? No. The father wants to protect his children from the temptations and immorality of the outside world (Christina also gets caught up in this, receiving a blow to the head with a VCR for letting one of his daughters watch Rocky and Jaws), and he makes enormous efforts to do so, but without realizing it, he turns into a cruel tyrant, and the model he has built appears to be a monstrous parody of the family itself. Of course, he does this out of love, with the best of intentions. But his love here takes on a hypertrophied character. Love to the detriment. And instead of an “ideal” family, he gets a family in which, in order to get something, you have to lick something.

At the same time, Latimos creates a universal scheme in his film (this is already a kind of macro level) through which older people influence the consciousness of younger people, forming their values and attitudes towards life. In essence, the methods of the state are no different from those of the parents in Dogtooth. The same can be said about school, church, and various illegal religious associations. This is especially evident in totalitarianism. We all live behind a high fence, and our parents, in the form of the state (school, university, church), decide for us who to fear, who to hate, who to love, what to watch, what is harmful and what is not, what is bad and what is good... A brilliant analogy, in my opinion. And in general, ‘Dogtooth’ is an extraordinary phenomenon in today's cinema. It is all the more surprising that this film, with its powerful message, was made by a director from Greece.