263. Babyteeth; movie review

BABYTEETH
Cert 15
118 mins
BBFC advice: Contains strong language, sex, drug misuse, suicide reference

I know someone who recently went through the horror of losing a teenaged son to cancer and saw the devastation the illness and then finality brought upon their family.
Selfishly, we all put ourselves in the position of those who face tragedy and wonder how we would cope.
In my case, I know the answer would be badly.
Therefore, I empathised with the parents of Milla (Eliza Scanlen) who is desperately trying to eke out the most from the last weeks of her life in Babyteeth.
Based on a play, Shannon Murphy's film presents the conundrum facing teenager Milla's parents when she becomes infatuated in a 23-year-old smalltime drug dealer (Toby Wallace).
In any other circumstances, he would be their worst nightmare and they would do everything in their power to keep him away from her.
Over and over he proves untrustworthy and yet he sparks in her a lust for life which was being extinguished by illness.
Meanwhile, her mum and dad (Essie Davis and Ben Mendelsohn) have their own issues - trying to nullify their anguish in various ill-advised ways.
Thrown into the mix are a small array of surreal characters, including a sensitive music teacher (Eugene Gilfedder) and a rather too honest pregnant neighbour (Emily Barclay).
The cast are excellent. Scanlen superbly reflects the rollercoaster moods of a girl who knows she is going to die but wants to squeeze the last drops from life.
Equally impressive are Davis and Mendelsohn as parents who are understandably at a loss of how to handle the situation, one-minute grabbing on to false hope, the next working with the inevitable.
Wallace is completely convincing as the young addict whose own back story begins to come to the fore.
Indeed, I would have rated Babyteeth more highly if its impact had not been diluted by the punctuation of surrealism.
This was a powerful enough story without these jarring tangents.
Nevertheless, I found myself lured in by Murphy's movie because of its powerful subject matter and a cast who are on top of their respective games.

Reasons to watch: Provokes thought about life's worst fears
Reasons to avoid: Is more than a tad surreal

Laughs: One
Jumps: None
Vomit: Yes
Nudity: None
Overall rating: 8/10

Did you know? Over the last decade, mortality rates for cancers in young people have decreased by more than a fifth (22%) in the UK. Rates in females have decreased by 22% and rates in males have decreased by 23%.

The final word. Eliza Scanlen: "I think we’re often met with caricatures of a dysfunctional family and it’s not usually that truthful, whereas this feels really real and like something that a lot of families can identify with, especially when a young teen is beginning to understand what independence really means." The Play List

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