A teenage girl undergoing cancer treatment literally runs into a young man with face tats and a mullet at a train station. They fall in love despite the disapproval of her parents. Oh, and he’s a drug dealer.
Babyteeth, set in suburban Australia, is presented with on-screen chapter headings like “A Little Bit High” and “He Didn’t Feel Like a Love Story That Day.” Sounds like an insufferable Sundance quirkfest in the vein of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, doesn’t it? Even so, that’s not how director Shannon Murphy’s feature debut plays out. She gives her story enough time to fully develop her characters into real people, rather than just collections of tics and quirks.
When Milla (Eliza Scanlen) meets Moses (Toby Wallace), she begins spending all her spare time with him, even though she’s 16 and he’s 23. She quickly takes him home to meet her parents, leading to a dinner scene driven by her mother Anna’s (Essie Davis) Xanax-fueled oversharing. Her psychiatrist father Henry (Ben Mendelsohn) is baffled by the situation. Moses starts spending so much time at their house that he essentially moves in.
Babyteeth initially aims for the kind of suburban hyper-realistic tone one associates with ’80s cinema. Jane Campion’s 1989 film Sweetie might be its closest Aussie role model. Murphy — who has worked in Australian theater and TV, and has directed episodes of the third season of Killing Eve — keeps the camera, generally handheld and moving, close to her actors, and sometimes uses odd angles for close-ups.
But Babyteeth doesn’t use any of these devices to mock its characters. Anna’s no-filter blather might lead to drama, but it’s also a product of her addiction to tranquilizers. The film provides parallels between Moses and Henry, with the latter actually being far more adept and dangerous in his use of drugs to control other people. Especially as the #MeToo movement has raised our sensitivity to the exploitation of teenage girls, a love story between a 16-year-old and a 23-year-old is bound to raise eyebrows — Babyteeth shows a physical attraction between the two, but continually delays the relationship’s possible consummation.
Babyteeth resembles TV shows like Euphoria and Shameless in regard to the subjects it tackles, but it’s not trying to be hip or shocking. It dodges the romanticization of girls and women with terminal illness, and Murphy refuses to dwell on her protagonist’s suffering. Even so, the idea that she’s out to collect experience while facing the possibility of an early death hangs over her behavior.
Babyteeth frequently changes tone. While its first act has a bit of cringe comedy — Anna deciding at dinner that it’s OK to talk about being “ripped to shreds” by forceps during Milla’s birth, for instance — the film pares itself down the further it goes, and it earns its two-hour runtime. After a garishly lit party that Milla and Moses attend, the setting is mostly confined to her family’s house. Despite a subplot involving violin lessons, the heart of the story involves only four characters. In its last half-hour, Babyteeth becomes increasingly intense, dropping its sense of humor.
Mercifully, Moses and Milla’s story never plays as “Pervy Dirtbag Junkie Lusts After Cancer Patient.” The screenwriting and acting are specific enough to avoid stereotypes. The same holds true for Mendelsohn’s and Davis’ performances. After years of cashing big checks for playing villains in Hollywood blockbusters, Mendelsohn gets to use his real accent and play a down-to-earth character. The film’s two couples have a lot in common, exemplifying unequal male-female power dynamics that mingle with real affection. Babyteeth suggests a bright future for Murphy, whatever medium she continues in.
