The cancer movie is always a hard sell. Particularly when it’s in the so-called “teen genre,” meaning, basically, the subject is a teenager with cancer so suddenly the soundtrack has a lot of “hip, fresh” music on it. With these movies, you always know how it’s going to end, and for some reason, directors and writers see fit to thickly lay on the schmaltz like molasses as though that will help the sting of the inevitable third act. If A Walk To Remember and The Fault In Our Stars have taught us anything, it’s that no one has ever really been able to strike the right chord with this narrative type. Until now. Possibly because the movie in question, Babyteeth, is based on Rita Kalnejais’ play of the same name. Kalnejais also adapted the script and, with direction from Shannon Murphy, the result is the perfect blend of cinematic snark and cancer genre melodrama. Except that, thanks to all the snark, it doesn’t feel nearly as melodramatic as the aforementioned two films.
The film opens on a scene of a baby tooth falling into water, its blood-ridden roots difficult to look away from. A symbolism that seems to connote that beneath the innocence represented by a baby tooth is the sinister underbelly of corruption in the form of losing one’s naïveté. For high school student Milla Finlay (Eliza Scanlen), whose mouth, yes, still hasn’t seen fit to let go of some of her baby teeth, such naïveté is fading quickly, for she’s undergoing chemo for her illness. We’re first introduced to her on a train platform. Standing serenely waiting for the next one, her balance is thwarted literally and figuratively by Moses (Toby Wallace), who barrels into her. His careless nature is just part and parcel of being a homeless drug addict, yet he shows his moments of tenderness toward Milla from the outset. Like when he offers his shirt to her when she gets a nosebleed as they’re talking. His kindness, of course, is interrupted by the fact that he asks Milla for money. She’s only too happy to give him a fifty, if he agrees to do a favor for her in exchange…
One supposes that when a boy shaves your head, an unbreakable bond is forged. That seems to be the case as Milla lets Moses do a hack job on her tresses with the shaver his mother uses for her award-winning Bichon Frises. When Moses is walked in on by his mother and brother, Isaac (Zach Grech), she is markedly disgusted and threatens, for what seems like the umpteenth time, to call the police. Seeing Moses cast out by his own mother touches something in Milla, and it’s as though she can’t bear the thought of him out in the world by himself. Her parents, Anna (Essie Davis) and Henry (Ben Mendelsohn), are not nearly as charmed, though they try their best to act nonplussed by Moses’ grotesque physical appearance and the overt age difference between him and Milla (he’s twenty-three) when Milla invites him to dinner. Moses’ lack of social grace and unconcern for the opinions of others is what attracts Milla most. And even when he’s caught breaking into their house a few days later, she doesn’t begrudge him, instead inviting him to stay for breakfast.
It seems so clearly doomed for its one-sidedness in terms of emotion, with Milla laying all her cards on the table and essentially offering a seemingly disinterested Moses her heart for the taking. It is only when she starts to see just how much more in love he is with the drugs that so easily orbit Milla (whether it’s for her cancer or the many meds her psychiatrist father has access to) that she begins to question any genuine feelings Moses might have for her. Yet it is precisely when she decides to write him off (after a final straw in his fucked up behavior) that he realizes she’s the only person in his life who has ever really cared about him, and that losing her would put him out in the abyss of the cold, hard world again. The thought is unbearable.
Like some cancer version of that other Australian classic, Candy, Milla and Moses share the “born to die” relationship fate of Dan (Heath Ledger) and Candy (Abbie Cornish), yet decide to let their fate run its course, relishing the best moments before the advent of the fall. Throughout their whirlwind entanglement, Milla’s parents are, not so much the voice of reason, but enablement. They know their only daughter hasn’t got much time, and they want to do absolutely everything possible to make it enjoyable. If, for whatever arcane reason, that means giving her as much access to Moses as possible, then so be it.
A surreal epilogue to the film fittingly takes place at the beach. For water is always a sign of both cleansing and rebirth. Starting over. Which is exactly what everyone in Milla’s life will have to do. Even Moses. But you best believe that won’t include listening to some bullshit faux pop song to punctuate the “mood” of his pain (yes, that’s shade at Mandy Moore’s “Cry” and Ed Sheeran’s “All of the Stars”). So it is that Babyteeth joins the only other bearable cancer love story, Dying Young (granted, it’s not of the teen genre, so it’s easier to make passable).
