Not very family friendly, long breakdown Writer and director have several films together, they all create worlds with arbitrary peculiar rules that will leave you baffled. The characters in Dogtooth act stiff and have deadpan delivery as if the repetitive nature of their lives has sucked any type of individuality from them. We don't even learn their names, that's how faceless they seem.
The only time we see a glipse of personality is when one of the daughters(Bruce:) takes the two video cassettes from Cristina(the sex companion). We see some scenes of her pretending to be a boxer and a shark also wanting to be called Bruce. Considering the restictive enviroment, she probably had no concept of boxing or sharks prior to watching the films and hadn't even physically seen anyone outside the family and Cristina. Did that cause the intense desire to leave right after? Perhaps learning even such seemingly miniscule things to us, about the outside world, caused her to reframe her current circumbstances as insufferable. Her feelings are so intense that she is on the verge of mental breakdown in the dancing sequence with her sister. What foolows is one of the most devastating finales. She fulfills the arbitrary requirement which frees her from the physical prison, namely breaks one of her dogteeth with a weight to show she is ready to leave the house. However, keeps playing by the nonsensical rules and in that sense is still behind bars mentally. Climbing inside the trunk of the car because walking on foot outside the boundaries of the house is not a possibility in her mind. She is conditioned to have that opinion most likely since birth, maybe the more appropriate phrase is brainwashed and as a result utterly delusional by no fault of her own.
There are a few aboslutely shocking sexual scenes. The director uses them to show how innocent and naive the "kids" are. They have no moral qualms of committing incest if their parents say that is acceptable and the way things are done. It's pushed to the absolute extreme and makes most other films feel sanitised and censored.
The son looks to be around twenty but still cudles with his parents sometimes. Obviously needs an outlet for his sexual urges, there comes the role of Cristina who is exactly that, a part time prostitute. There is a very subtle scene where she mentions a dream of hers. She was walking in the forest with the father, the son jumps from the trees as a zombie and they start throwing rocks at him. Pretty suggestive metaphor for the way she sees him, mindless without a chance to form his own opinions. Then asks him to share one of his dreams. Unsuprisingly his one is drab and simple, his mother falling in the swimming pool. What else could he dream about if the objects and people in his life are so resrtricted.
Perhaps the biggest tell regarding what the film is about, is the dog trainer sequence. He says the dogs are there for their behaviour to be determined, maybe it can be a friend or a guard dog that obeys his master. One of the most absurd scenes is when the family thinks the daughter has escaped and starts barking on all fours. Right after the father mentions he will collect the actual dog since it has finished the final stage of its training. These scenes are all linked to way the parents shape the children's behavious to the utmost degree. The scene in Cristina's apartment is also related. After the father smacks her on the head, he wishes for her children to have bad personalities. Maybe that line shows his greatest fear and primary motivation to keep them in the house?
Dogtooth is one of those low budget art films with very specific and oblique messaging. It will seem utterly nonsensical if you don't try to figure out its internal logic. It encapsulates everything I look for in a movie.