There's never been a better time to be a Yorgos Lanthimos fan. Since 2023's Oscar-winning Poor Things, we've been treated to a new release every year, the latest of which is Bugonia. The conspiracy theory drama premiered this week at Venice Film Festival to a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score, and stars Emma Stone as a CEO who may or may not be an alien.
However, before we get another dose of Lanthimos' deadpan, surreal exploration of human nature, I think it's worth going back in time to one of the director's earlier movies. 16 years back, in fact. 2009's Dogtooth wasn't Yorgos Lanthimos' debut feature film, but it's certainly the movie that put him on the map – and one that set the stage, thematically and stylistically, for what was to come in later hits like The Lobster, The Favourite, and Poor Things. Now, the movie is getting a new lease of life in UK cinemas with a re-release courtesy of Vertigo Releasing.
Dogtooth marked Lanthimos' first collaboration with writer Efthymis Filippou (who he'd go on to work with again on his more abrasive (complimentary) films: Alps, The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and Kinds of Kindness) and gained international recognition after it won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes Film Festival before being nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2010 Oscars.
Family affairs
The Greek-language film follows an unnamed family who lives in an isolated walled compound: a married couple (played by Christos Stergioglou, who Brit comedy fans will recognize from Stath Lets Flats, and Michelle Valley) and their three adult children (played by Angeliki Papoulia, Mary Tsoni, and Christos Passalis).
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The siblings aren't allowed outside and have been told that they can only leave their home when they've lost a dogtooth (AKA a canine tooth), which will signal that they're ready to face the outside world. They're entirely ignorant of what lies outside their four walls; instead, their parents have molded their offspring's own reality, including their language. Their mother records vocabulary lessons for the trio to listen to on tape, one of which informs them that the sea is "the leather chair with wooden arm rests like the one in the living room." Good behavior results in meager rewards from their parents, while bad behavior is punished with violence.
This dysfunctional, abusive domestic dynamic is a thinly veiled – but effective – metaphor for fascism: the movie was released in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash, when Greek fascist party Golden Dawn's popularity was on the rise amid the country's debt crisis. Lanthimos' later movies are also clear-cut in their politics: Poor Things' third act hinges on Bella Baxter's discovery of socialism, for example. And that's not the only area where Lanthimos sows seeds that he'd go onto harvest in later movies.
Discomfort viewing
Dogtooth is an uncomfortable viewing experience, and its uneasy tone is exemplified in its approach to sex. Despite being infantilized by their parents, the siblings' father pays Christina, one of his employees, to have sex with his son, an early iteration of the discomforting intimate scenes that would go on to punctuate Lanthimos' later movies like The Favourite and Kinds of Kindness.
The curiosity of the family's eldest daughter, unsuccessfully quashed by a controlling father, brings Poor Things' Bella to mind again, Stone's reanimated protagonist with an insatiable lust for life. Dogtooth's most iconic scene involves her performing the dance routine from Flashdance to her bemused family after she obtains a bunch of '70s and '80s VHS tapes from Christina, and disconcerting dance numbers have gone on to become somewhat of a staple of Lanthimos and Stone's collaborations.
In short, then, I can't think of a better way to gear up for Bugonia, the duo's latest team-up, than by revisiting Dogtooth. Lanthimos hasn't made a Greek-language movie in 14 years, but his English-language follow-ups bear clear signs of their forebears.
Dogtooth's anonymous family may be a dysfunctional nightmare, but the movies in Lanthimos' filmography, linked by the same artistic DNA, make for a much more enjoyable family dynamic.
Dogtooth is out now in UK cinemas. For more on what to watch, check out the rest of our Big Screen Spotlight series.
