Dogtooth (Giorgos Lanthimos)
With absurdist comedies, the easy part is getting the dry tone down right. Dogtooth does that exemplarily well, from the first couple scenes. It’s what to do once that tenor has been established which tends to hamper filmmakers, and such is very much the case here. The movie is not oppressively tedious like, say, Roy Andersson’s ghastly Songs from the Second Floor, but it remains resolutely one-note. And while individual sequences can be clever and amusing, all that the movie has to say, it says in the first 10 minutes. And, truth to tell, it has nothing much to say – overly restrictive parents stifle their children’s growth; being extreme in protecting others will backfire. Well, duh. The narrative goes nowhere. Like many smug films, it has very little to be smug about.
4/10
I don't agree that it is about parents restricting growth. Rather the film is an argument about whether or not society is inbred or conditioned. Dogtooth goes back and forth throughout the film. And it absolutely leads us to believe that society is conditioned, and then the younger daughter starts to break it down, dancing in a fashion that she clearly could not have been taught but one might see a child doing as imitative of MTV. The film is a sick joke, but I don't believe it's as simple as several on this board are making it out to be both in terms of how the arguments go back and forth and by how extreme it is taken.