Dogtooth - 2009 ***

A very weird movie. One that leaves you with an empty and slightly unhinged feeling in your stomach, but one that I have been itching to see for sometime. There definitely is a hint of Michael Haneke in it as well which adds to the strangeness.

Also it is the only Greek film that has ever won at the Cannes film festival so Yorgos Lanthimos must be very pleased with himself.

A husband and wife go to bizarre and sometimes frightening extremes to 'protect' their three children from the outside world. The children cannot go out the house, are barely able to interact with anyone who comes to visit, and are taught words that have different meanings everyday by listening to tapes their mother makes (i.e. a zombie is a yellow flower, a sea is something you sit in with leather armrests).

It is not clear why the parents are being this way, (one bizarre scene has the father lining them up and telling them that cats are their enemy and that as long as they don't venture out into the garden for too long then they will not be eaten by one) and one suspects that they are either the most paranoid human beings in the world or just utterly mad.

The children survive by making up games with each other that appear to be mostly sexual, and spend a lot of time being incestuous with each other.

It is a complete head ****, which I'm sure is what the director intended, but like 'Funny Games' it makes you feel very uneasy afterwards, although the thing about films like this is that they don't have a point. It is pointless to expect there to be a reason to this film, so just watch it and suspend your disbelief.