A winner of the Prix Un Certain Regard at last years Cannes film festival, Dogtooth (directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, who also co-wrote the film) follows the day-to-day life of an unnamed Greek family (the characters are known simply as mother, father, older daughter and so on) as they live an existence completely hidden from the surrounding world. The father (Christos Stergioglou) is the only member of the family permitted to leave the house as he travels to and from his (unspecified) place of work. The infantilised, teenage children have never left the house and are taught to believe numerous odd and illogical things in order to explain the world as they are permitted to see it. They are told that their mother will give birth to a dog and that the fish they eat are caught in the swimming pool and that overhead airplanes are toys that they can earn by behaving. Furthermore, words that pertain to things which exist outside the house are given new meaning by the parents (for example telephone means salt). This paradise is compromised when the father brings home a young lady called Christina (Anna Kalaitzidou) to service the sexual needs of his adolescent son (Hristos Passalis). Christinas visits to the house confuse and unsettle all the children in varying ways as the film unfolds. Amusingly, Christinas influence is most destructive when she gives the eldest daughter tapes of the films Jaws and Rocky. Upon watching the tapes (and being confronted with hundreds of new words and images) the eldest daughter becomes obsessed with the movies, quoting the dialogue and re-enacting various sequences, sometimes violently. To my mind, this is a perfect allegory for the media as an influence on the behaviour of children, in that this sort of disturbed reaction to media images is only possible in an environment where they are allowed to become the sole educator. It is precisely because the parents withhold information from their children that the films are able to have this impact on their daughters behaviour. This is just one of the many possible points of political, sociological or psychological interest in Dogtooth. The film can play equally well as a study of conditioning (the children are likened to dogs more than once). Or perhaps its about religion and arbitrary nature of meaning. Or perhaps you could see it as being about totalitarianism. Or patriarchy, for that matter. In one scene the son brutally kills a cat which has become an unexplained presence in the garden. Is there a better allegory for intolerance and bigotry - for being afraid of what you dont understand? Is there a better cinematic depiction of fear as the root of violence? To say that Dogtooth is interesting or that it has depth is to gravely undersell it, as it is surly one of the deepest and most interesting films around. For something so thoughtful and demanding of close analysis, Dogtooth is also more purely entertaining than it has any right to be: equal parts harrowing family drama and subtly amusing black comedy. The film is sometimes tense, occasionally funny and often disturbing. The performances are perfect across the cast, with Mary Tsoni and Aggeliki Papoulia particularly effective as the two daughters (youngest and oldest respectively). They imbue their young-adult characters with childlike mannerisms, particularly in one scene where they perform an excruciatingly bad dance for their parents. All the actors transmit a certain coldness and convey that the characters have no real understanding of how to be affectionate. On a technical level the film is also flawlessly executed. Thimios Bakatatakis does a fine job lighting the film, which looks stunning. It is to the credit of both Bakatatakis and Lanthimos that a film mostly bound to one house and a garden is so cinematic. The shots are nicely composed and there is a real sense of time and space throughout the film. It is not too long into Dogtooth that you feel like you know the layout of the house and garden, whilst things like time of day are made abundantly clear by the lighting. It is also a film which has confidence in the viewer to be shown things, rather than told them and as a result there is no exposition (or at least what little there is has been perfectly disguised). Being a small-scale Greek film about ideas, Dogtooth is hardly the traditional multiplex fodder and is therefore unlikely to get a wide release in UK cinemas, at least outside of London. But those who can find it playing in their local independent or art house cinema should definitely rush out to see this fascinating and marvellous film. Dogtooth may provoke a really wide range of responses: some may find it funny, whilst others may just find it disturbing. But either way you should leave the film thinking and feeling. To my mind, there really isnt higher praise for a film than that. 'Dogtooth' is released in the U.K. today.