Dogtooth

With its often darkly comic surrealism and absurdist perspective on human behavior, Yorgos Lanthimos' Oscar-nominated Dogtooth suggests the early work of David Lynch and Luis Buñuel with its oddball story of a family totally brainwashed by a functionally insane mother (Michele Valley) and demented, fascist father (Christos Stergioglou). The couple has isolated their son (Hristos Passalis) and two daughters (Aggeliki Papoulia and Mary Tsoni) from the outside world—essentially teaching them all the wrong things—such as a twisted vocabulary that suggests the word 'sea,' for instance, refers to an armchair. An already dysfunctional situation is further fractured when the dad brings home a young woman, Christina (Anna Kalaitzidou, playing the only named character) to sexually initiate the son. Lanthimos' direction sometimes carries the exploitative air of a freak circus as family members engage in recreational activities marked by various levels of human grotesquerie, but the film unquestionably makes most contemporary Anglo-American independent flicks seem tame and uninspired. After all, where else in modern cinema can you find lines like: 'Do you know what Dad will do when he finds out you lick my keyboard?' Recommended. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include an interview with director Yorgos Lanthimos (13 min.), deleted scenes (6 min.), a photo gallery, and trailers. Bottom line: a solid extras package for this Oscar-nominated foreign film.] (M. Sandlin) [Blu-ray Review—Aug. 27, 2019—Kino Lorber, 97 min., in Greek w/English subtitles, not rated, Blu-ray: $29.95—Making its latest appearance on Blu-ray, 2009’s Dogtooth features a great transfer and a DTS-HD 5.1 soundtrack. Extras include audio commentary with stars Angeliki Papoulia and Christos Passalis, interviews with director Yorgos Lanthimos and critic Kent Jones (45 min.) and Lanthimos solo (13 min.), and deleted scenes (6 min.). Bottom line: this latest release adds some new extras to the previous solid Blu-ray release, which was also from Kino.]