Baby Teeth (2019)

Directed by: Shannon Murphy | 120 minutes | comedy, drama | Actors: Eliza Scanlen, Michelle Lotters, Toby Wallace, Sora Wakaki, Renee Billing, Zack Grech, Georgina Symes, Essie Davis, Ben Mendelsohn, Emily Barclay, Eugene Gilfedder, Edward Lau, Charles Grounds, Jack Yabsley, Andrea Demetriades, Ashley Hanak, Quentin Yung, Jaga Yap, Priscilla Doueihy, Shannon Dooley, Justin Smith, Tyrone Mafohla

‘Babyteeth’ tells the story of a sixteen-year-old girl who is seriously ill, her overprotective parents, a drug addict in her twenties and an unwilling baby tooth. Milla (the sick girl) and Moses (the homeless good-for-nothing) meet on a platform and immediately sparks fly. He helps her with her spontaneous nosebleed, asks for money for shelter and jumps out of the train when she indicates that he must do something for her.

Milla takes Moses to her house, which results in a rather embarrassing encounter, especially for Milla. Her parents clearly don’t like the scruffy-looking young man. In their eyes he is too old, too unkempt, too ‘bottom of society’. Their concerns are justified, as Moses soon reveals his untrustworthiness to their deeply infatuated daughter. But because of her persistence, Moses also grows something of affection, maybe even love.

With ‘Babyteeth’, debut filmmaker Shannon Murphy sheds light on the perspective of Milla’s parents – Henry, psychiatrist (a great Ben Mendelsohn) and Anna, former musician (Essie Davis) – as well as that of Milla (Eliza Scanlen, as disarming as in ‘Little Women’) and Moses (Toby Wallace). Milla’s parents are torn between their concern for their only child and the desire to make her last period on Earth so meaningful. Milla is as green as grass, but she throws herself into her first crush without worrying about social conventions. It’s refreshing to see a teenage love filmed without swarms of peers who also have to give their opinion. As a viewer we get a grip on Moses less easily. He has all appearances against him, and after a break-in, drug theft and abandoning Milla in the middle of the night, the reasons for not liking him pile up. Yet he also settles into the heart of the viewer, especially because Murphy shows him from Milla’s point of view.

Another strong point about ‘Babyteeth’ is that Milla’s parents don’t feel like movie parents anywhere. They have more depth than just being Milla’s parents, they have their own problems, fears, desires, a sex life and a history just like ‘normal’ adults. However, ‘Babyteeth’ is far from perfect; a number of subplots are mostly just distracting and the tempo drops every now and then. In addition, the premise isn’t exactly new either (the film sometimes feels like a cocktail of ‘The Fault in Our Stars’, ‘Girl with nine wigs’ (‘Heute bin ich blond’) and ‘Now Is Good’), but ‘Babyteeth’ is really just a better movie than those examples. And then the film looks great too, with clever use of natural light in the daytime or evening scenes and neon light during a party. Moving family portrait with a high ‘what would you do as a parent’.