Taking a considerable aesthetic departure from his previous works, Yorgos Lanthimos transforms the screen into the site of an art installation—and if this time he seems to rely more on the visuals than the contents, it is to a no less piercing ultimate result.
Although the relentless zooming in and out got me a little woozy, other bold stylistic choices such as fisheyes and the combination of colour and b/w, did feel convincing and perfectly synergistic to the narrative—all the more as shot on vibrant Kodak stock.
Echoing scattered if vivid traits of the architecture of Mackintosh, Gaudí, Horta, as well as reminding me the romantic surrealism of Tim Walker’s fashion stories, production designers Shona Heath and James Price put together a colourful theatre of contaminations that never feels dull or inconsistent—and provide the perfect sound box to Jerskin Fendrix’s fantastic score.
Whilst I particularly loved the dancing skills of Mark Ruffalo and everything Kathryn Hunter did, and does in general as an actor, it is indeed Emma Stone’s Bella the true driving force of the film—the baffling purity of her logics, her straightforward attitude to life, her roaming without intent, but a clumsy yet somehow extremely elegant and seductive gait, through a world that feels much stranger than the freakish past that created her.
I pause for a moment. I am looking for a way, even a tiny little door like that of Alice because Dogtooth, which in its own deviated fashion is no doubt a land of wonders, has left me as any Yorgos Lanthimos film—with a blurry sense of curiosity and fascination.
My fingers touch weightlessly the keyboard as if pleading for collaboration—sometimes it works. The word ‘experimental’ appears on the white page. I read it once or twice. Wrong suggestion, I conclude—never trust the machines. I glimpse my reflection in the mirror with the corner of my eye. Back to the screen, I type ‘surreal,’ which I seem to find a little more convincing—and yet so generic. Thus I delete it but slowly, going backward letter by letter, thinking that after all it is not that off. By now I’m a little annoyed because I’ll be soon run out of time and energy. It’s very late, but on the nth tragic yawn some clearer ideas finally start to take shape.
Pitching a brilliant, if eccentric, solution Dogtooth hints at Plato’s cave while delving into the delicate themes of education and parenthood. Raising a family ceased to be a natural task as our century began to put pressure on the individual, exposing him more and more to the manipulative compulsions of society. As any clever satire, Dogtooth lets us build the bridge from its allegoric aberrations to our own weaknesses, our own neuroses, our own fixations—which is scary, and profound, and now I am definitely tired. But there’s one last thing I can't help wondering—if Lanthimos has any clue of the expressions he puts on his viewers’ faces. As I am sure he wouldn’t mind, mine is currently that of a ‘little yellow flower’. That said, I switch off the light, but keep my eyes open.
