Keep it in the family

I can only apologise for the crap quality of the images gracing this post.


They are stills (or screen grabs) from a Greek movie called Dogtooth (or, maybe, Kynodontas).


The plot involves a mother and father who keep their three grown-up children isolated in a remote country estate: no newspapers, tv, radio or, as far as I could see, books.


There they teach the children the wrong meanings of words and wrong things about the world (cats are, apparently, vicious human killers, the most dangerous killers of all -- and they particularly target small children).


There's warped sexuality galore here, including sibling incest (of all types) along with weird, controlling, co-dependencies, and bloody violence that spurts seemingly from nowhere.


The film is engrossing and thought-provoking and horrific and funny in equal measures: at times it triggers memories of press coverage of evil Austrian Josef Fritzl, walling up his daughters and making them bear his children; at others, so backward are the three offspring it feels more like a fantastical version of Blue Remembered Hills, the pioneering television play where adult actors played the characters of children.


There's something very evil at the core here, something we never quite understand but that we can feel (which makes it much worse). I can't think of a way to describe this film that doesn't make it sound ghastly and off-putting: but I really think you should see it.