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Film Data
Babyteeth  2019
Director:  Shannon Murphy
Producer:
  Alex White
Art Director:
  Bill Goodes
Editor:
  Stephen Evans
Music:
  Amanda Brown
Screenplay:
  Rita Kalnejais, based on her stage play
Director of Photography:
  Andrew Commis
slideshow
Cast:
spacer1 Eliza Scanlen
spacer1 Essie Davis
spacer1 Ben Mendelsohn
spacer1 Toby Wallace
spacer1 Emily Barclay
spacer1 Andrea Demetriades
spacer1 Arka Das
spacer1 Charles Grounds
spacer1 Georgina Symes
spacer1 Zack Grech
spacer1 Michelle Lotters
spacer1 Priscilla Douelhy
spacer1 Eliza Scanlen spacer1 Essie Davis spacer1 Ben Mendelsohn
spacer1 Toby Wallace spacer1 Emily Barclay spacer1 Andrea Demetriades
spacer1 Arka Das spacer1 Charles Grounds spacer1 Georgina Symes
spacer1 Zack Grech spacer1 Michelle Lotters spacer1 Priscilla Douelhy
spacer1 Eliza Scanlen spacer1 Essie Davis
spacer1 Ben Mendelsohn spacer1 Toby Wallace
spacer1 Emily Barclay spacer1 Andrea Demetriades
spacer1 Arka Das spacer1 Charles Grounds
spacer1 Georgina Symes spacer1 Zack Grech
spacer1 Michelle Lotters spacer1 Priscilla Douelhy

Synopsis:

Making her cinema feature after a successful career in both TV and cinema, director Shannon Murphy chooses to adapt a stage play, Rita Kainejais’ Babyteeth, the original author providing the screenplay, and despite obviously having the option of opening up the story for the screen, relying on a sense of intimacy between the four main characters and keeping to limited locations, but clearly focusing on the performances rather than any cinematic tricks or flourishes.

The set-up is very much that of an older-skewing YA novel, with Milla (Eliza Scanlen - Little Women / TV’s Sharp Objects), a sixteen-year-old cancer sufferer, falling in love with Moses (Toby Wallace - TV’s Romper Stomper), their meeting being rather less than star-crossed as Moses tears off his shirt to try to stop Milla’s copious nosebleed, one of her particular illnesses’ symptoms, reality hitting when he then tries to get money from her to get a bed for the night. Moses isn’t exactly Romeo, being a twenty-three year-old junkie and drug seller, complete with face tattoos, always a wise life decision, and decidedly unpredictable nature, alternating between unsettling unpredictability and surprising tenderness.

The problems of course really emerge when Milla introduces Moses to her parents, psychiatrist Henry (Ben Mendelsohn - Animal Kingdom / Star Wars: Rogue One) and musician Anna (Essie Davis - The Babadook / TV’s Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries), who quite understandably have reservations, severe ones, but also realise, without ever making it specifically obvious, that they, and Milla, know that her time is limited, so force themselves into a compromise, accepting Moses, and an uneasy friendship develops, at the same time showing the intricate relationship between Henry and Anna.

Both Murphy and Kainejais are fair to both sides, neither being entirely in the right or the wrong, and Milla is one of the more believable female protagonists, and one can see what attracted Murphy to the piece, and also how it could quite happily work on stage with the core cast of four, on-screen chapter titles replacing stage act breaks.

Murphy’s pic has scooped up a slew of awards from various film festivals, taking Best Picture at the Brussels International FF and also taking various acting, screenplay and direction gongs at locations as varied as Luxembourg, Marrakech, Palm Springs, Sãn Paulo, Venice and the FEST Festival in Poland, and also attracted some very warm reviews, The Chicago Tribune believing ‘Murphy isn't afraid to play with color and light and text and music, or to let her characters dance like no one is watching, and often. That energy, embodied in the filmmaking and in the performances, is what puts this coming-of-age film into a class all its own’, and The Film Stage finding ‘Like the ramshackle family it so fondly depicts, Babyteeth is not without its flaws but it does suggest a confident new voice in independent cinema’. The Wrap asked ‘Does it all work? Not quite, but you can’t fault a film for its ambition, least of all one that does manage to bring it all together for a deeply moving home stretch’.

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