Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Year Released: 2009
Rating: 3.5
Genuine oddity has a husband and wife teaming up to lock their children up in their house and creating their own fictitious universe for them (where generally recognizable words, like "zombie" and "cunt" have alternative definitions) apparently in order to protect them from the "evils" of the world. Though psychologically suspect - today's parents, to me, seem all too eager to kick their offspring out and 'into the world' (it's an American thing: run from your family!) - it does succeed in operating on a metaphorical level (it's no coincidence the title bears close resemblance to von Trier's Dogville, another movie about morality), speaking about not just the Familial Unit and what happens when parents are too overprotective and sheltering ("normal" sexual desires turn incestuous or perverse; Mom and Dad exhibit the same bizarre intimate behavior as their offspring) but about Society as a Whole and how transgressions are brutally punished and freedom is limited. Its concluding shot is a simple but intricate one - it speaks of the effects of conditioning and leaves its audience to deduce whether we can ever really 'cope' with the damaging influence of either our parents or our culture. You might run, but you might not get very far.
