World cinema - dogtooth

In the world cinema screening, we watched Nine Queens which is a film of the 'New Argentine cinema'. When reading the weeks reading on the film, i came across this quote:

 

''If anything can be said to characterize the heterogeneous corpus of films and aesthetic projects that constitute the so-called ‘new Argentine cinema’  it is that they all stage narratives of disintegration (communitarian, political, social, economic, cultural, familial and personal)'' - Gabriela Copertari, 2006.

This explains that world cinema tries to portray their country's realistic history and the change of the society today, which different audiences from different backgrounds and countries may interrupt in different ways. However, this still gives the countries to express their views and opinions on the country they live in, rather than leaving it to Hollywood to stereotype them.

Dogtooth is a Greek film, produced in 2009 and is also known as Kynodontas in Greek translation. I particular enjoyed this foreign language film as even to the Greek audience, the language is foreign, with the children being brainwashed and taught different meanings to different objects and situations within their world, by their mother and father. Therefore, the foreign film does not reflect Greek society yet allows a very different strange viewpoint to be expressed from Greek cinema, to the world. Yet this film still portrays very different messages to audiences across the world. For example, some audiences believe the film shows a metaphoric message of today's society with children believing and abiding by rules of the elder generation and their parents. This doesn't defeat that fact that this film is within it's own narrative genre, with nothing like it in the cinemas.

The mother and father tell their daughters and son that the bush in the garden is their brother and that cats are the animal to fear from, with the son chasing the cat with garden clippers. The young girls also believe that if they give someone a gift then they should give a gift back. however, this leads to some slight incest with them licking one another's 'Keyboards', which they have been told is the definition of their body parts. Much of this weirdness goes on within the film but although the audience including myself finds this film a hard watch, completely crazy, he film does reflect the what if factor. The what if in the sense that our society brings us up and we learn from others who tell us what is right and wrong and the definitions of elements within our world but we just go with what we are old. To these children in his film world, they know no different and believe everything they are being taught is how everyone lives.

Copertari.G. (2006) Nine Queens: A dark day of simulation and Justice. Routledge, London. 20 August.