Teenage Milla (Eliza Scanlon) is battling a serious illness, but is neither happy nor sad exactly. She's going through the motions until she meets Moses (Toby Wallace), a struggling drug dealer, at a station after he almost walks in front the train before she stops him. After they then start talking, she quickly falls head over heels in love with him. This is her parents' (Essie Davis and Ben Mendelsohn) worst nightmare, with the sort of lifestyle Moses leads. But this first taste of romance puts a spring back in Milla's step, even while it spells danger for her domestic relationships, and she now begins to show everybody she encounters how, and why, to live passionately in the face of great adversity.
Babyteeth won 8 AACTA Awards last year including Best Film but frankly, I have no clue how. Director Shannon Murphy applies numerous arthouse visual touches which couldn't hide what I felt to be a very cliched and tame coming-of-age narrative, and it's about 20 minutes overlong because of two superfluous subplots in Rita Kalnejais' screenplay. There are decent performances from Scanlon, Wallace and Davis, but their work isn't strong enough to compensate for the storytelling failings and Amanda Brown's score borders on overkill. For me, these Babyteeth didn't bite. 6/10.
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