Film Review: Babyteeth

Originally published August 3, 2020

Babyteeth is an Australian film about Milla, a teenager with cancer. She falls in love with small-time drug dealer Moses from the first moments of the film. Milla is played by Eliza Scanlon, making this her second recent film where she plays a sick character. It even has a protracted scene at a beach! Give the woman a break.

First-time screenwriter Rita Kalnejais adapted the film from her play of the same name. Adapting your own work can bring good results; Gone Girl and Moonlight are perfect examples of this. It doesn’t work here. Babyteeth doesn’t truly adapt a play into a movie. Instead, it tries to bring wholesale elements of theater to the big screen and combine them with the language of cinema. It fails.

The problems begin in the opening moments. Babyteeth regularly utilizes titles to break the film into scenes. These titles aren’t useful. The film is entirely linear. These titles don’t orient the viewer in time or space and they merely telegraph what the following scene is about. That might have been effective if the film was subtle. Babyteeth is not a subtle film.

Every actor in the film is playing to the back of the theater. The performances are big and loud. The movements are pronounced and their facial expressions are overt. Scanlon’s performance is probably the best in the film, but it’s a shame to see an actor like Ben Mendelsohn completely wasted here as Milla’s father. The script often tries to defy our expectations of the “young girl with terminal illness” genre, but that doesn’t work if the actors can’t deliver. Here, they do not.

If there are standout elements, it’s the cinematography and music. The cinematography holds the actors in long close-ups and emphasizes the parallels and differences between Milla, Moses and her parents. There are moments where the cinematography does a better job portraying the sensuality of Milla and Moses’ relationship than the script or performances. The editing changes throughout the film. At first, it is quick and disjointed before becoming smooth and easy toward the end of the film.

The music is the film’s best anchor, changing from Amanda Brown’s score to an appealing soundtrack as the moods and scenes change. It makes the peculiar decision to focus on Moses instead of Milla. Transitions between the score and soundtrack occur as he enters and exits scenes.

Babyteeth tries to be a satire of the “young girl with cancer” genre, but it can’t help but rely on bad tropes and awkward storytelling to stagger across the finish line.

Final score: 6.7/10