Allegory and Gesture in Yorgos Lanthimos‘ Dogtooth and Alps

Abstract

Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth (2009) and Alps (2011) examine the conditioning and possibilities of self-determination of the subject within microcosms that function as national, neoliberal and biopolitical allegories. Through a performative use of allegory, both films illuminate ways of constructing and instrumentalizing meaning and ideology. The deindividuation within each microcosm and the attempts at emancipation of each protagonist are attested by bodily and cinematic gestures. Their necessary alienation from their microcosm lastly leaves each protagonist in a suspended state between potentiality and subjectivity without a subject. I argue that these states point towards the necessity of radical change regarding the allegorically implicated societal dynamics and exhibit cinema’s potency both to keep viewers oblivious to their living conditions, and to aid in the subversion of these conditions.