Marie Wocher Annotation

Dogtooth directed by Yorgos Lanthimos When is a child ready to leave the house? When the dogtooth falls out. The almost adult siblings in the film Dogtooth, that was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards in 2009 have the misfortune that they still have their dogtooth. So, the three have never been outside of their parents premises, which is enclosed by a high fence. The parents want to protect the children from the outside, what is full of wild animals, like by name the cat, the most dangerous animal, what attacked their invisible brother who died. This is the scenario the parents create to imprison their children. By not having the possibility to match their habit, their language, their image of the world, within the family occurs a strange system of hierarchy, brutality and incest. The father is the only family member who leave the house to go to work. He is the owner of a factory where also Christina works as a security guard. Christina is the only person who is allowed to come to the house from time to time to satisfy the boys sexual needs. The siblings don't have any natural distance, not to each other and not to their parents. On the one hand, they adore their parents and are forced to believe them (for example they are told that a mother can give birth to a dog and Frank Sinatra's "Fly me to the Moon" is recorded by the grandfather), even they believe in a vocabulary, the mother is introducing. On the other hand they are curious about the world they have never experienced, becoming frustrated and obnoxious. It is an old idea to infiltrate ones own conviction to other people, particularly when these people are ones own children. But unlike in "The Village" by M. Night Shyamalan that brings up the same idea of creating an alternative way of life by imprison its inhabitants, in Dogtooth  you can't see an ideology an idea about life the couple pursue. You just have this oppressive feeling of a completely odd situation, you will not understand.

Andre's notes:

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extensive description of situation the characters of the film live in

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lacking information on the director self contained – would be good if were hints of possibles research threads