Babyteeth (2019)

Some movies you just love. Some movies you just hate. Some you think are okay but turn out to be a lot more. Shannon Murphy’s Babyteeth definitely is one of the latter as I wasn’t that invested in it and yet it had a devastating, emotional effect on me. 

While waiting for a suburban train to take her home from school, terminally ill teenage Milla Finlay (Eliza Scanlen) is almost knocked over by Moses (Toby Wallace), an older small-time drug dealer wearing a Hawaiian shirt and “rocking” a rat tail. Milla becomes immediately infatuated with him, despite his asking her for money, and after getting herself a rat tail at Moses’s former house (turns out his mother kicked him out), she brings him home. 

Her parents, psychiatrist Henry (Ben Mendelsohn) and retired musician Anna (Essie Davis), aren’t exactly thrilled to make Moses’s acquaintance as they smell trouble right away. However they do not forbid Milla to see Moses, and as the love birds head for a relationship with many ups and downs, Milla shows everyone— Moses, her parents, her sensitive violin teacher, even her pregnant neighbour — how to live. 

While the pregnant neighbour (Emily Barclay) subplot adds very little and it's left unresolved — although it does showcase Henry’s habit and compulsive need to fix things —, the one involved the music teacher (Eugene Gilfedder) isn't developed as it should have, some parts of the film are quite slow and boring — hence I found myself distracted and not particularly focused — and the rich girl falling for the bad boy isn't new, the filmmakers do a good job telling yes, the story of a dying girl's first love, but also a  tragic family drama where the mood is lightened with a bunch of comic scenarios. 

The characters are arguably the most striking aspect of the script as the main four characters are well fleshed out, complex and fascinating, but most of all they all are flawed. They don't always react to what life is throwing at them with grace; they often have tantrums, push each other away, and fight, only to apologize. Milla is the core of the story, the energetic force whose love for life, a life that could end at any moment, spreads upon everyone in her life. She is completely inebriated by Moses which helps her cope with her illness but at the same time it doesn’t as their interactions aren’t always of the healthy kind. Her parents have their problems too. As I mentioned before, Henry is obsessed with fixing things which, for a psychiatric, translates in prescribing drugs initially to his wife to fix her anxiety and keep her rage at bay, and later to Moses to make him stay with them and keep Milla company. Not to mention the morphine he self-injects to hide from Milla’s illness. It’s refreshing to see both parents change throughout the film. Henry eventually reveals his vulnerabilities, and Anna, an uptight and quite neurotic drug addict at first, develops into a loving and fierce mother.

Easily the most striking aspect of Babyteeth is the mind-blowing acting. Eliza Scanlen, who seems to have found her niche playing sick girls — Amma in HBO's Sharp Objects, and Beth in Greta Gerwig's Little Women — is a force to be reckoned with in the role of Milla, as she delivers such a wide range of emotions, through dialogue but mainly facial expressions and body language, and portrays the character with so much grace, brightness and energy. Ben Mendelsohn gives a nuanced performance as the father, and delivers some very tender and emotional scenes at the end. Essie Davis gives a bold performance that is both funny and poignant. And Toby Wallace brings to the film tremendous charisma and makes you fall in love with Moses. 

Ultimately, Babyteeth is not a perfect film as it features clichés of the genre, pointless subplots and a pace that doesn't always make it easy to pay attention, but the great characters, terrific performances and the heartbreaking and yet beautiful ending make it worth the time.