Baby­teeth

Ever since Ali McGraw died in Love Sto­ry, there’s been a steady slew of films about ter­mi­nal­ly ill young women who expe­ri­ence a trans­for­ma­tive romance before their inevitable demise. A Walk To Remem­ber, Now is Good, Rest­less, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl – they may take dif­fer­ent guis­es, but the results are always sim­i­lar: sick girl meets boy, girl teach­es boy valu­able les­son about himself.

Of course, women exist­ing as a tool to male bet­ter­ment is noth­ing new in Hol­ly­wood, but even a twist on the for­mu­la, such as in teen weepy The Fault in Our Stars (the boy dies!) still man­ages to reduce the com­plex­i­ty of fac­ing your own mor­tal­i­ty when you’ve only just become aware of it to a roman­tic narrative.

What a breath of fresh air, then, Shan­non Mur­phy​’s debut fea­ture is. It stars Eliza Scanlen as Mil­la Fin­lay, a 16-year-old can­cer patient who (yep, you guessed it) devel­ops an infat­u­a­tion with a local né’er-do-well after they meet on a train plat­form on her way home from school. Based on Rita Kalne­jais’ play of the same name, it’s an effer­ves­cent com­ing-of-age sto­ry that man­ages to be hon­est, imp­ish and com­plete­ly dev­as­tat­ing in a sin­gle breath.

Mil­la knows from the off that Moses (Toby Wal­lace) is bad news. He’s got a rat tail, face tat­toos and a shirt unbut­toned to his naval. Intrigued, she invites him home for din­ner, where her par­ents Anna and Hen­ry (Essie Davis and Ben Mendel­sohn) are bemused, but begrudg­ing­ly accept­ing of his pres­ence. It helps, by her own admis­sion, that Anna is high through­out the meal, while Hen­ry – a ther­a­pist – real­ly just wants to see his daugh­ter hap­py, regard­less of how inap­pro­pri­ate her blos­som­ing rela­tion­ship with Moses might be.

Through a series of chap­ters, we get to know Mil­la, wit­ness­ing her cre­ativ­i­ty dur­ing vio­lin prac­tice with an eccen­tric teacher and empathis­ing with her strug­gling to fit in at school, giv­en how wild­ly dif­fer­ent her con­cerns are to those of the girls around her. Moses offers her respite, but also dan­ger; a chance to expe­ri­ence life way beyond her com­fort zone, be it break­ing into his mother’s house or sneak­ing out to a late night party.

They don’t talk much, in con­trast from oth­er films, where teenagers speak with the rue­ful elo­quence of much old­er souls – Mil­la and Moses are delight­ful­ly brash, awk­ward, and imma­ture, as are Anna and Hen­ry, who have pre­pared for every even­tu­al­i­ty oth­er than their daugh­ter falling in love.

Tak­ing visu­al cues from Ter­rance Malick’s Bad­lands and the teenage dreams of Sofia Cop­po­la, Mur­phy presents a sun-drenched vision of Milla’s world, nev­er con­de­scend­ing but instead invit­ing audi­ences into her mind. Every imper­fec­tion, every reck­less deci­sion, high­lights the fragili­ty and fleet­ing nature of teen­dom, made all the more poignant giv­en that Mil­la is acute­ly aware of her diag­no­sis, and remains deter­mined to live on her terms all the same.

While Wal­lace makes a delight­ful­ly objec­tion­able love inter­est, the film belongs to Scanlen, Davis and Mendel­sohn, a com­plex fam­i­ly unit with remark­able chem­istry. A late scene, in which they vis­it the beach togeth­er and con­tem­plate their sit­u­a­tion, earns its emo­tion­al evo­ca­tion, as noth­ing about Baby­teeth feels manip­u­la­tive or trite.

Films about teenagers – par­tic­u­lar­ly teenage girls – so often feel too pol­ished or self-con­scious, but there’s a raw, kinet­ic ener­gy about Baby­teeth which helps it side­step the pit­falls of the genre. A tru­ly impres­sive debut from a film­mak­er we will undoubt­ed­ly be see­ing much more of, it’s per­fect view­ing for these hot, uncom­fort­able sum­mer nights, but just make sure you’ve got your Kleenex at the ready.