![]() Moses continues to visit Milla at school. The following day Anna warns Moses to stay away from her daughter. Milla and Henry wake up and are alerted to the situation, but while Henry wants to call the police Milla pleads for leniency, which Anna allows, noticing how much happier Milla is with Moses. Both are uncomfortable with Moses due to the age difference between him and Milla, but are permissive due to Milla's illness.Ī while later, Anna wakes up at night and discovers Moses in the process of robbing the family for prescription drugs. Milla quickly develops a crush on Moses and introduces him to her parents: Anna, a musician, and Henry, a psychiatrist. ![]() On her way home from school one day she meets 23-year-old Moses on a railway platform, and he almost immediately asks her for money. Milla Finlay is a 16-year-old school girl, recently diagnosed with cancer. Scanlen plays Milla, a 16-year-old girl from a wealthy family who falls in love with a drug-addict named Moses shortly before she has a cancer recurrence. It was released in Australia on 23 July 2020 by Universal Pictures and won nine AACTA awards, including Best Film. The film had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on 4 September 2019. It stars Eliza Scanlen (in her first film appearance), Toby Wallace, Emily Barclay, Eugene Gilfedder, Essie Davis, and Ben Mendelsohn. ![]() In a subgenre that often mawkishly preaches one should live a short life to its fullest, Babyteeth shows the fullest can be an ordinary day at the beach, when Milla turns the camera away from herself and onto her parents, the sea, the sky.īabyteeth is released on 23 July in Australia, and on 21 August in the UK.Babyteeth is a 2019 Australian coming-of-age comedy-drama film directed by Shannon Murphy from a screenplay by Rita Kalnejais, based upon her stage play of the same name. The family’s ultimate embrace of Moses has a whiff of saviour complex and its treatment of secondary characters – such as Henry’s flirtation with the pregnant neighbour, and Moses’ rift with his younger brother – are storylines too neatly resolved.ĭespite these elisions, the film’s effect is shattering because of how squarely it hinges on Milla’s perspective. Classical music, which scores much of the film, functions like an umbilical cord between mother and daughter: Anna’s pill-hazy state instantly dissipates when she stumbles on Milla dancing euphorically to Sudan Archives’ Come Meh Way at her violin teacher’s home.īut the insular, privileged universe in which the characters move betrays the film’s origins in the cloistered theatre world. Refreshingly for the genre, Babyteeth focuses on Milla’s family too: dysfunctional, but doing their best to medicate their own and each other’s pain. Her head is newly shaved after relapse and she has bouts of nausea, but she shoplifts lipstick from the chemist, unabashedly tucking it into her bra and immerses herself in the dark room of a party, illuminated by projected fireworks. The film finds rousing energy in the tension between Milla’s journey into adulthood, and the potential dead-end of her illness. Murphy and first-time screenwriter Kalnejais both have a background in Australian theatre, and they’ve structured this shrewd, affectionate drama through playful intertitles. She fights against the way they stigmatise him in a later scene, when he breaks into their house to steal prescription pills, her father calls him a drug addict. There’s an age gap, and there’s her parents: ex-concert pianist Anna (Essie Davis) and psychiatrist Henry (Ben Mendelsohn), whose cold and spacious, glass-panelled Sydney home Milla brings him to. The encounter – somehow both gentle and violent – leads to an initially arms-length relationship, despite their obvious attraction. ![]()
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