DOGTOOTH

A family lives in a luxurious villa with a pool on the outskirts of an unknown place. The house, immersed in nothingness with a huge garden, hosts a peculiar family composed of five people: the mother, the father, and the three children, two girls and a boy. The children, unnamed, were raised by their parents inside the house according to the rules dictated by the family. But this is not a simple choice of home education. The young people have never set foot outside the house in their entire lives and have a totally distorted view of the outside world. Every concept that could make them believe there is a life outside the villa has been distorted by the parents and completely resized. "The new words of today are: sea, highway, excursion, and carbine. The sea is a leather armchair, the highway is a very strong wind, the excursion is a very hard material for making floors, and the carbine is a beautiful white bird." This is the beginning of "Kynodontas", and already from the first words we understand that we are not watching a totally regular film. This is the first important work of director Giorgos Lanthimos, who, with his rather controversial soul, won the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival and even came close to the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. A film that therefore positively impressed both the public and the critics, despite dealing with a story that to define as "crazy" would be an euphemism. The story is about a family composed of five people: the Father, the Mother, the Son, the Elder, and the Younger. They have no names, no identity, and their peculiarity is that they have never had any type of contact with the world outside their home. They have never seen other people except Cristina, the "safety valve" of the Son and the only character in the film to have a name. They have never seen a news broadcast or a television show. They only listen to old Frank Sinatra records in which they believe it is their grandfather singing. They only use the television at moments of celebration when they watch footage of themselves celebrating something absolutely stupid. They live and have always lived far from everything and, above all, in the dark about everything. And the parents did this not out of meanness but to preserve them from the world. But how did they do it? By completely deviating them from every rule known to civilization. Words have a different meaning from the real one, airplanes regularly fall in the garden and can be collected as a prize, fish are spontaneously born in the pool, and cats are dangerous animals, the scariest creatures one can ever encounter. Their life is segregation, but not forever, "the moment they are ready to leave the house is when the canine falls out. It doesn't matter if it's the right or the left. But to leave the house, you have to use the car, and you can only use it when the canine grows back." An emblematic phrase of the film that encapsulates all the crazy poetry, aimed at the unhealthy well-being of the boys. An example is the brother who lives beyond the fence, a symbol of rebellion and an artifice to keep them in the house. Everything seen in the film is in contrast with the very concept expressed at that moment. While one thinks that everything is done for the best, at the same time, one changes opinion and points the finger at the parents (undoubtedly sick) but who have an unconditional and totally wrong love for their children. A crazy, slow film, made of very long shots that help to understand the monotony of life in the house. The color white is predominant, perhaps to represent the apparent purity that reigns over the children, in reality, anything but clean. Like children, they discover the power of their bodies, experimenting with each other. Always balancing between drama, horror, and grotesque, it is not a film that does not know which direction to take, on the contrary, the path it wants to take is very clear and encompasses all three genres equally. Scenes like the performance with dance, balloons, and cake or the Father announcing that the Mother is pregnant with a child and a dog are scenes of such strong impact where one does not know whether to laugh, be scared, or feel embarrassed. Perhaps no sensation or perhaps all three together. "Kynodontas" is a shocking film, but not like an impact horror film because it is not a horror film, it is not a film in which psychological violence is unbearable, built on an escalation of tension that leaves the viewer shaken for days. It is not a family tragedy, and it never happens what one expects to happen because it is impossible during the viewing to formulate a hypothetical ending. It is not a lot of things but at the same time, it is everything. At the end of the viewing, the viewer will be shaken and intrigued to the point of not being able to help but think about how such an idea could have come to mind. "Kynodontas" was translated for the international market as "Dogtooth", which literally means "canine".