![]() There’s no overarching moral or saccharine point by exploring these characters’ lives as truthfully as possible instead of focusing on Milla’s cancer, they make Babyteeth into the most powerful cancer movie in recent memory.īabyteeth will be available on VOD beginning June 19.How old is Eliza Scanlen? She was born Eliza Jane Scanlen on January 6, 1999, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Instead, the focus is domestic, as Murphy and Kalnejais spend most of their time fleshing out the little family and the way their lives intertwine. Their budding relationship is the film’s ostensible plot, but there’s no sense that it’s all leading to some grand, romantic denouement. Most of the film sees the four characters together, emphasizing both familial and romantic love even when Milla and Moses are most prominently in the spotlight. ![]() They’re already reckoning with grief, and how best to live normal lives with the specter of Milla’s death looming over them. Babyteeth bucks yet another storytelling convention by having Milla’s parents be just as adrift as she is, rather than having them around solely to deliver platitudes about moving on and treasuring what life you have. Rather than demurely accepting her death and becoming someone for everyone else to project upon, Milla does her best to defy her failing body, sometimes even staring directly into the camera, directing her rage at the viewer, too.Ĭircling nervously around the two of them are Milla’s parents, Henry (Ben Mendelsohn) and Anna (Essie Davis), who don’t know what to make of Moses, but more importantly, don’t know how to deal with Milla’s progressing illness. Scanlen is magnificent, channeling Milla’s frustration into her sometimes-demonic expressions, and her physicality, as, in a fit of anger, Milla writhes like someone possessed. ![]() He lends the proceedings a sense of immediacy, especially as faces weave in and out of the frame, putting the focus on the timbre of the dialogue and on body language.Įssie Davis, Toby Wallace, Eliza Scanlen, and Ben Mendelsohn in Babyteeth. (Like Moses running away because the stress of taking care of Milla becomes overwhelming, for instance, or Milla dealing with the change in how people see her after she begins wearing a wig.) Cinematographer Andrew Commis uses a handheld camera to catch characters either in extreme close-ups, or with swathes of negative space around them. That insistence on keeping dialogue relatively spare rather than overtly walking the audience through the story makes the more stereotypical beats feel less labored than they might otherwise. The lack of narrative hand-holding helps the film feel more real, and waters down the Tumblr-ready aesthetic of the chapter titles. The audience is expected to put the pieces together on their own. Characters don’t say more than they need to. They’re the movie’s most heavy-handed element, but they’re excusable because the rest of the film is so subtly made. As their relationship progresses, though, everyone else around them does wonder: Is he just taking advantage of her?īabyteeth’s story chapters are denoted through occasional text on the screen (“When Milla brought Moses home to meet her parents,” “Love,” etc.). He’s 23, but Milla never seems to question their difference in age. His confidence and fearlessness make him attractive to Milla, but also make it difficult to tell why he’s interested in her. Immediately afterward, he asks her for money, then refuses to take anything, because the one bill she has is too much. It’s immediately clear he’s a chaotic force: when her nose starts bleeding, he wrestles her to the ground to take care of her, taking off his shirt and using it to mop up the blood. She’s only shaken out of her reverie when Moses (Toby Wallace), a tall, tattooed, rat-tailed young man resembling a taller version of Shia LaBeouf’s American Honey character, accidentally barrels into her. As she stands in a train station, waiting for the train home from school, she stares down at the tracks, contemplating stepping in front of the next train to arrive. The movie’s opening scene sets the tone for everything that follows: 16-year-old Milla (Scanlen) silently considers suicide. Eliza Scanlen and Toby Wallace in Babyteeth.
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