Directed by Shannon Murphy
Written by Rita Kalnejais
Starring Eliza Scanlen, Toby Wallace, Essie Davis, and Ben Mendelsohn
Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes

by Jaime Davis, The Fixer

“This is the worst possible parenting I can imagine.”

The heart wants what the heart wants, as the saying goes, especially when it comes to first love. Sometimes young love is perfect and sweet and tender and right. Other times it’s swift and heavy and raging - a little right mixed with a little wrong. Often it’s something altogether in-between.

In the beginning of Babyteeth, Milla, seemingly school uniform-innocent, meets her first love as she waits for a train in Sydney. The aptly named Moses, in all his rat-tailed, face-tatted, junkie splendor, approaches Milla for money. And that’s all it takes for Milla to fall, quite deliberately and seriously. Their hyper modern meet cute and seeming dichotomy of backgrounds might be enough to sustain the plot of a more basic film - what would it be like for two people with completely different lives to fall in love for the first time? Yes, we’ve seen that movie before, the story of “Good” falling for “Bad”. But wait, there’s more - Milla’s parents, Henry and Anna, are quite unwell. Milla is dying. And Good and Bad aren’t so easily defined here.

Henry and Anna could be the worst parents, or perhaps the best. I still can’t decide. Babyteeth allows us to witness the last few months of Milla’s short life - as a terminally ill teen, she’s determined to wade in the waters of her first love with Moses, despite his initial rejection and her upscale parents’ chagrin. Henry (a psychiatrist) and Anna (a former classical musician) can’t believe Milla’s heart yearns for Moses, whose own heart mostly yearns for some unnamed drug. But before we immediately rule Moses out, we learn Henry self-medicates and prescribes a cocktail of treatments for Anna - despite the outward appearance of finer things (BMW, stunning Mid-Century Modern home) the two are drowning in their own misery. Henry and Anna share more in common with Moses than they’d ever admit - their existence in functional society masks the trouble within when they’re really just addicts with fancy shit.

Which is why, when Milla shows no signs of recovery, they bring Moses to live with them, just as the Biblical Moses was brought into the Pharoah’s home by his daughter. Having him with her day in and day out makes Milla happy and fills her last moments with joy and life. It gives Moses, shunned from his own family, a place to lay his head each night. Henry also obligingly procures medicine to keep Moses on the hook. A win-win, it seems. What happens when Anna and Henry are all each other has left?

Babyteeth is an electric feature debut from director Shannon Murphy and writer Rita Kalnejais. Murphy recently directed a few episodes of season three of Killing Eve, so it’s good to know she’s being put to use. She displays a very forward, unique technical style - the film plays with light and editing and music and intertitles in ways that keep you at attention even when the story dips lightly into melodrama. The music and editing are quite complementary, lending an almost music video quality to certain segments, which I happen to love. As a former wannabe music supervisor, I applaud the music supervision by Jess Moore. Tune-Yards’ Bizness plays while Milla’s face is awash with vibrantly projected fireworks at a party. An instrumental arrangement of The Stranglers’ Golden Brown serenades us as Milla meets the object of her affection for the first time (a fitting choice considering the original is about heroin, love, or both). Milla dances freely and emphatically, perhaps for the first time, to Sudan Archives’ Come Meh Way at a music lesson. Along with her mother’s passion and prodigy of music, the soundtrack is perfectly styled to the anguish, tenderness, and longing of all the main players.

The cast of Babyteeth is led by recent breakout Eliza Scanlen (HBO’s Sharp Objects, Little Women) in yet another strong showing. Her Milla is so many things as she roars towards her end - firecracker, sweetheart, rebel, daughter, lover. Ben Mendelsohn as Henry is probably the most immediately recognizable - already a big, huge mega star in Australia, you may recognize him from his big, huge mega Hollywood roles in Rogue One, Ready Player One, and Captain Marvel. He’s solid in this, and his demeanor in the final scene pretty much broke me down. Essie Davis as Anna and Toby Wallace as Moses succeed in the heavy emotional lifting required by their deeply flawed characters.

Two weeks after watching, I’m still in awe of this film. Over the past year, I’ve suffered a bit from uppity white people sob story fatigue, and though Babyteeth veers lightly into this realm more than once, all of the individual pieces make for one of the most beautiful viewing experiences I’ve had in a while. Viewer be warned this isn’t a “dying girl checks off bucket list” kind of movie - it’s difficult, honest, and messy. A lot like falling in love for the first time.

Available to watch on demand Friday, more information available here.