Dogtooth

“Magnificently disturbing!”—Time Out New York

It’s safe to say you’ve never seen a comedy like the surprising and unsettling Greek film Dogtooth. (If you can imagine the peculiar result of Michael Haneke [Caché] directing a comedy, you might have an inkling of what to expect.) A hyper-stylized mixture of verbal comedy and physical violence, Dogtooth is a darkly funny look at three teenagers confined to their parents’ isolated country estate and kept to a strict regimen that suggests a warped experiment in social conditioning and control.

The children spend their days devising their own games and learning an invented vocabulary (a salt shaker is a “telephone,” an armchair is “the sea”)—until a trusted outsider, brought in to satisfy the son’s libidinal urges, plants the seeds of rebellion by trading VHS tapes for sexual favors. Dogtooth was selected for the Un Certain Regard prize (which honors new talents and innovative vision) at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. (96 mins., 35mm)