Cutting edges
Submitted by HALfie on
An apparently depressing aesthetic hides the recurring brutal Lanthimos’s directing style where roles are intentionally flat and disturbing.
Metaphorically speaking, Alps and Dogtooth show the same cutting edges in a reverse way, letting the viewer disoriented; both of them analyze the family unit seen from opposite points of view.
Watching “Dogtooth”, the spectator can observe the “family unit” from an inner and strict perspective with no chance to get out of it, the family unit is a cloistered horror garden, in few words a false and idealized sanctuary of desolate interactions.
On the opposite side, “Alps” totally breaks the family links introducing an external intruder through a mechanism of repression and substitution; it's not by chance that the same actress Aggeliki P. plays the role of rebel protagonist that breaks out of a home (Dogtooth) and breaks into the other one (Alps).