Fresh and Exciting

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Dark, unpleasant movie about contemporary Greece, set by a dying father and a lost-soul daughter. Strange how you can fall in love with an actress you haven't seen before, as I did with Ariane Labed playing Marina. I guess she reminded me both physically and spiritually of an ex-girlfriend. Attractive, somehow boyish, always making the other move, both at a distance and now and then unexpectedly intimate. All the talking in other reviews about Marina being emotionally 'dead' is total nonsense. You have to (try to) understand this character, but not many men are willing or able to. To me she was the shining light in this portrayal of a depressed, bankrupt and humiliated country. This movie worked like a magnet to me. After I finished watching it, I was almost certain the director had to be a woman of about my age. I was right. I suppose Ariane has a great filming future ahead of her, but I hope she will perform in movies like this one. But it could just as well be her best role already.

What in the holy hell was this garbage?!?!? This Greek film is so completely devoid of meaning it's just a ball of junk. Perhaps that's not entirely true. Within the 90 minutes there is a bit of story that could have been nicely packaged into a 15 minute short film. That means 75 minutes of NOTHING have been added in between what actually means something. I am sure the director had a vision and the symbolism would be apparent but NO, it's NOT apparent. What we're subjected to is scenes of no meaning and essentially zero emotion. None. I will say this -- it is an interesting view of Greece, quite unreminiscent of the postcard-pretty, beautifully sunny, white washed Mediterranean scenes most people have seen a thousand times. This is a bleak Greece with bleak life wrapped up in a bleak film. I watched in a state of perplexation then at the end I wanted to run outside and scream in horror at what a terrible movie this is... but it was 4 a.m. and I'd wake up my neighbors. I'd rather watch 90 minutes of just my facial expressions while watching this film. Or I'd rather set myself on fire because that would be more entertaining than this so-called movie. In 86 movies, it's actually not the worst I've seen in 2013 but it most definitely was a total waste of time.3.5 / 10 stars--Zoooma, a Kat Pirate Screener

I liked this film, but only after making the following assumptions about what director Maria Tsangari was trying to do: (I) Depict current post-Christian Greece as an emotionally dead society that had failed to develop properly as had the rest of Europe (hence the need for cremation in Germany, music from France). (II) Make Marina the symbol for Modern Greece. She is devoid of human feeling, and yet the only character who really matters. Her architect father is dying. Her engineer lover is an automaton. And I think Bella does not really exist, but is Marina's alter ego--the real human Marina would like to be (this would explain their synchronized dancing and Marina's request that Bella sleep with her father). (III) Show humans as little different from the gorillas seen on Sir David Attenborough's BBC show. The naked and semi-naked women parading around the changing room could have been a scene from an Attenborough nature documentary. When Marina and her lover were bouncing on the bed like gorillas they were making a conscious attempt to go back to their roots; to escape the emotional sterility of modern Greece.It is a movie of beautiful, haunting tableaux. The closing scene of trucks rolling though the industrial landscape after the ashes of its architect were scattered in the nearby sea shows that life on earth goes on, regardless.

Difficult. That's what cult stands for in this situation. Greece's highest creations come from a group of people where they recycle and create via a type of rotation. The producer of Dogtooth become a director, the director an actor and so on. Not bad at all. Follows the artistic aspect of Dogtooth, showing a story on adulthood and dealing with loss and what you are. An unconventional human being (with a touch of Asperger's syndrome), a loving and caring father, a slutty best friend and a partner almost like an alter ego, resembles to her father, and mirrors herself. Honest, familiar yet artsy, method-ish and pretentious from time to time. But still opens up to the viewers, where the twisted is welcome, no one judges and offers himself to the public effortlessly, honestly almost unconditionally. A new era, post modern, unlocks the contemporary social establishment.