Babyteeth is a fiercely independent film about a terminally-ill teenage girl who, while coming to terms with her diagnosis, falls in love with a troubled young man. If that logline sounds familiar, it’s because it is. At this point ‘teenage cancer drama’ may as well be a standalone genre or at least a loose title for grouping popular tearjerkers where teens find love and then die. Yet Australian director Shannon Murphy steps into cliched territory with a marked sense of self-assurance and creative vision and ends up offering one of the year’s more refreshing films. For a debut feature, this is certainly an accomplishment worth applauding.
The film follows 16-year-old Milla Finlay (Eliza Scanlen of Sharp Objects), who has recently been diagnosed with cancer and is undergoing chemotherapy treatment. Milla’s parents, Henry (Ben Mendelsohn), a sensible psychiatrist, and Anna (Essie Davis), a high-strung ex-musician, are overprotective to the point of being controlling. But their suffocating behavior is rooted in their love for Milla and fear of what life and marriage might look like without her.
One day, Milla’s routine train ride home from school is interrupted by Moses (Toby Wallace), a charmingly frantic, cheaply tattooed, and possibly high young man. Moses, in a heroic but haphazard effort, rips his shirt off to stop Milla’s nosebleed before eventually asking her for money. She’s left utterly awestruck. Despite their significant age difference (Moses is 23 years old), an immediate connection between the two is formed; Milla is in love, though it is harder to gauge Moses’ feelings.
During a tense and hilarious meet-the-parents dinner scene, Henry expresses his disapproval directly to Milla and Moses, while Anna—who is too high on the Xanax that Henry prescribes her — only laughs hysterically at the unlikely situation. Milla bounces between scornful looks at her parents and wide-eyed stares at Moses. Scanlen successfully plays Milla as both a lost little girl in need of coddling and a rebellious young woman who is confident in what she wants.
Accordingly, the scene serves to introduce us to the layered and emotionally interdependent relationship that these four characters will share. It also sets the premise for the remainder of the film: although Moses is the last person Anna and Henry would want to see dating their daughter, he has undeniably breathed new life and meaning into Milla’s dejected world; his live-for-the-moment attitude might just be the right prescription for someone who has few moments left to live.
As the plot progresses, the true, and much more nuanced, themes of the film become clear. Babyteeth is not about cancer or love or growing up. These ideas represent the undercurrent of a story that thoughtfully explores modern-day family dynamics. Henry and Anna try to simultaneously shelter and expose Milla in a way that will likely be relatable for many parents. They do so while quietly longing for more support or space from one another; a tension that, unfortunately—but very realistically—rears its head in explosive outbursts over the mundane, instead of honest conversation about the meaningful.
In a similarly inconsistent manner, Milla will turn to her parents for tenderness in one scene, and in the next, fight them tooth and nail for independence or in defense of her drug-addicted boyfriend. Meanwhile, Moses, never censoring his personality, appears to come and go as he pleases, exuding an authenticity that every member of the family (including Milla) detests in some moments, admires in others, but bickers about nonetheless. Weaved into these intimate relations is a shared sense of humor and a general tendency towards compassion and forgiveness amongst all the characters.
Babyteeth offers a delicate and sincere portrayal of domestic life and its various challenges, capturing the fluid, uneven, and idiosyncratic ways families tend to communicate, which can be brought to emotional extremes during times of hardship. Where Murphy succeeds is in not letting the dramatic moments become too emotionally draining or tedious to watch; the script skillfully positions these dramatic clashes as being representative of just one element of human emotion, of which the characters run the gamut. As a result, the film is able to be funny, stylish, sad, and uplifting; it is at one time lighthearted and heart-wrenching.
Babyteeth truly moves to its own impulsive rhythm. The story advances via the use of abrupt title cards, which divide the film into short and distinct fragments. The brisk pace of the editing, the sudden sense-seeking cinematography, vibrant color palettes, characters dancing instead of sobbing, and the decision to opt for an eclectic contemporary soundtrack rather than a sentimental score, work together to subvert viewer expectations.
That being said, while the film’s spontaneous quality is one of its greatest strengths stylistically, it does lead to some minor fumbles in narrative structure. For example, it felt unrealistic for Milla and Moses’ relationship to blossom as quickly as it does; but because of the film’s abrupt editing style, it was consistently unclear if time was moving forward hours or weeks after a given jump-cut. In injecting the script with such disruptive sensory moments, believability also began to wane; would a 16-year old girl really put on a record and start confidently and smoothly dancing to violinist Sudan Archives in the middle of her music tutor’s office?
These hiccups are forgiven, though, when you realize how harmoniously the impulsive stylistic elements of the film mesh with its own subject matter. What the film perhaps captures most poignantly is the tendency for people faced with crises to embrace spontaneity, particularly if those crises draw attention to the ephemerality of life.
One of the most enjoyable things about watching a debut film like Babyteeth is walking away with the sense that you’ve just been given access to the stylistic blueprint of an artist who is sure to develop as an influential cinematic voice in years to come. It’s like watching Wes Anderson’s debut film Bottle Rocket or Scorsese’s early shorts; their signature elements are all there but in a raw and unrefined form. Ultimately, while Murphy is no doubt treading in familiar indie subject matter, she operates with a kind of youthful directorial confidence that doesn’t allow time for eye-rolls. During the film’s climax, when Babyteeth inevitably becomes the tearjerker we had predicted, we no longer care about clichés or expectations because the path the story took to get there was, in contrast, deeply unpredictable, idiosyncratic, and textured in a way that’s true to life, especially in times of personal crisis. Despite anticipating the film’s emotional gut-punch, it knocks the wind from our lungs all the same; we fail to fully brace ourselves in the face of such vulnerable performances and disruptive stylistic choices.
