Dogtooth, which may be the highest profile Greek release since the heyday of Theo Angelopoulos, opens in the US today after over a year on the festival circuit (it won the Prix Un Certain Regard at Cannes 2009). I’ve been hearing glowing reports of Dogtooth, some even calling it the film of the year, but I still haven’t seen it and I’ve studiously avoided finding out too much about it. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film with so many different, and I mean really different, posters, all telling different stories. Kino’s American poster, by far the most visceral, nods to some kind of gothic horror (a film about werewolves? about domestic abuse?) which is a far cry from the cryptic graphic cosines of the original Greek poster which tell you next to nothing. The Spanish pictographic tells us more (a family of five in picket fence suburbia) while hinting at something awry (children in blindfolds?), though the use of the dog’s tooth for the "i" in Canino doesn’t really add anything. And then there are the Dutch, Russian and British posters, all using the same swimming pool photo (though the Dutch poster makes the best use of it) and there’s that blindfold again, but the disconnect between that image and the title still leaves you scratching your head. And then another, more recent, Spanish poster, even more mysterious (that fence again, and a boy who looks like a fugitive from Funny Games) and the French poster, Canine, which tells you even less, though you can tell something is up. All pieces of Yorgos Lanthimos’s puzzle, and all enough to make you want to know more.
