Homeschooled

Kynodontas (Dogtooth)

(2009)

A. O. Scott ordered me today (well, technically tomorrow, in a Sunday section that comes on Saturday) to stream this Oscar®-nominated Greek film, and you know me: I can't say no to the Times.

One very strange and probably very good film, about a couple who shelters their (teenage? older?) son and two daughters to an absurd (and absurdist) extent, providing incongruous definitions for words that might jangle their complacency and never letting them stray from the grounds of their suburban home (the title comes from an article of faith: a child is ready for the father's freedom of a car only when one or the other ["it doesn't matter"] canine teeth falls out and grows back).

This might all work, in its way, but for the need to provide a sexual outlet for the son. The security guard from the father's plant--taken blindfolded to and from the house--becomes an inadvertent snake in the garden by providing one of the daughters videos of Jaws and Rocky. And how ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm . . . ?

I'll give Scott the last word, because it's a good word: "a creepy, funny, elegantly shot allegory of something very weird in human nature (Language? Power? Sex? Family?)."