Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy: The Strange Sexual Dynamics of 'Dogtooth'

In our weekly series Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sex scenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around them, and their legacy. This week, we're tackling Dogtooth, the third feature film made by Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The Favourite) and the insane and strange sexual dynamics at play in the film.

For most American audiences, Dogtooth served as our introduction to the warped sensibilities of Greek writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos, who has since become a darling of the indie filmmaking scene and a three-time Oscar nominee. Unlike some filmmakers who start out with edgy material and then soften it as they "go Hollywood," Lanthimos continues to operate in the moral grey areas that he always has. True, the sight of Emma Stone smacking herself in the face with a book in The Favourite doesn't pack quite the same visceral wallop as Angeliki Papoulia knocking out her tooth with a dumbbell in Dogtooth, but the malicious intent of both acts is equally felt.

Dogtooth concerns a family living in a sprawling home that none of them, save the father, is allowed to leave. The father and mother have constructed an entire existence for their three unnamed adult children—oldest daughter Angeliki Papoulia, middle sonHristos Passalis, and youngest daughter Mary Tsoni—which has left them frightened of the outside world. In order to satisfy the sexual desires of the son, the father brings in a woman named Christina (Anna Kalaitzidou) with whom he works to have sex with the son so that he doesn't act on his urges with his sisters.

Already, the film's strange sexual dynamics rear their ugly head, and speaking of which, Christina soon finds herself dissatisfied when the son refuses to go down on her. Christina then manipulates the oldest daughter to perform cunnilingus on her in exchange for the headband she's wearing...

Soon, the oldest daughter begins angling for more gifts from the outside world in exchange for her oral favors, leading to her acquiring VHS tapes of popular films like Rocky and Jawsfrom Christina. These tapes, along with her discovery of her parents' pornography earlier in the film, giveher the first taste of what is happening outside the walls of her home. When the father discovers this betrayal, he mercilessly beats both the oldest daughter and Christina, leaving him and the mother with no recourse but to allow the son to pick one of his sisters to have sex with from now on.

The process by which he will choose a sister to have relations with involves him closing his eyes in the tub and then determining blindly which sister has a body more compatible with his desires, with Angeliki Papoulia approaching on his right side and Mary Tsoni sitting to his left...

The brother checks out the bodies of both sisters in what seems like a coldly diplomatic way, but one which only furthers the bizarreness with which this family operates...

Ultimately he selects his older sister to be his new sexual partner and their first sexual encounter is every bit as awkward as one would imagine from this family. The sister's only sexual experiences until this point have involved Christina, making her brother the first man to have sex with her.Being forever trapped in a state of suspended adolescence adds another layer to this already disturbing scene, with the two awkwardly playing with one another's bodies like children discovering sex for the first time...

The realistic way in which Lanthimos shoots the sex scene only further unsettles the audience, seeking to keep things on the disturbing side of the sexual equation without every really making it overtly arousing...

Papoulia plays the scene brilliantly, never allowing anything but a look of discomfort to come across her face, selling the fact that sex doesn't necessarily equal pleasure, a dynamic that runs throughout every sexual encounter in the film...

Many critics and film historians have pointed out the obvious similarities between the film and a Mexican film from 1973 title The Castle of Purity from director Arturo Ripstein (Foxtrot, Such is Life). Lanthimos has admitted that the films are similar, but that he was unaware of the existence of the 1973 film when he wrote Dogtooth. In a 2012 interview with Screen Anarchy, Lanthimos explained the difference between the films thusly...

I think it's a completely different film if you start with why and how this group is formed. What I'm more interested in is what happensbecausethis group exists and how it affects people, how it changes them. How those people interact and how far they can go. Where does everything fall apart? I think that way, you make a film that is more open, a film that is connected to many other things besides the actual story of how something began. You are free to connect it to different behaviors in society, humanity, and other systems. I find it much richer to not deal with the why.

Lanthimos does indeed dispense with any form of explanation as to why this family behaves in this way and what the parents' motivations are, but I don't know that this makes it a "richer" film as a result. It undeniably makes it more disturbing, however. Audiences don't need to be held by the hand and have every single thing explained to them, but some context might have made the children more sympathetic characters beyond any obviously inherent sympathy derived from their horrible reality.

It is entirely possible that Lanthimos was inspired by the same story which inspired Ripstein's film—a Mexican family in the 1950s was held hostage in their own home by a tyrannical father—but the fact that he makes it clear that there's a very clear distinction between the construction of the two films casts at least some doubt on his claims. Not having seen The Castle of Purity, I can't draw a definitive conclusion on the similarities between the films, but many essays written about the film have compared it to the work of surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel, who is an undeniable influence on Lanthimos' film.

Dogtooth is a sexually surreal work, one which never asks you to be turned on by any of the acts on display, but the mere presentation of sex in such an explicit way can obviously lead people to be unintentionally aroused by the scenes. Perhaps a more definitive explanation of parental motivation would have cleared up such issues, but Lanthimos' desire for ambiguity has left these scenesopen to debate in a way that's sure to unsettle the audience long after the film is over. Personally, I don't think Lanthimos would have wanted it any other way.

Catch up with our other editions of Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy...

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Scarlett Johansson's Nude Debut inUnder the Skin

The 2 Very Different Sex ScenesofBasic Instinct

How Halle Berry's Nude Debut Led Her toMonster's Ball

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Jennifer Connelly Comes of Age inThe Hot Spot

Lisa Bonet's Bloody Nude Debut inAngel Heart

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