Babyteeth film review: Wolf at the door

Eliza Scanlen and Toby Wallace in a scene from director Shannon Murphy’s Babyteeth

There’s a moment in Babyteeth when a husband and wife look at each with resigned half-smiles and agree they are doing the “worst possible parenting”. Yet what is the best possible parenting when your 15-year-old daughter, your only child, has terminal cancer?

That’s the question at the heart of this movie, the feature debut by Australian stage and television director Shannon Murphy. It is based on the successful stage play of the same name by Rita Kalnejais, who wrote the script.

The father, Henry (Ben Mendelsohn), is a psychiatrist. The mother, Anna (Essie Davis, much loved for the Miss Fisher movies), is a former concert pianist. The daughter, Milla (Eliza Scanlen), is still at an all-girls school in Sydney. On bad days she has to wear a wig.

This is a family that is struggling to keep it together. Each of them is unravelling. The house is stockpiled with prescription drugs and Milla is not the only one taking them. If anything she seems the most composed. Her parents are going through every parent’s worst nightmare.

Their lives change when Milla, waiting for the train to go to school, meets a young man named Moses (Toby Wallace). He’s 23 or so. The eight-year age difference, at this time in an adolescent woman’s life, goes to the title: Milla still has a few baby teeth.

Moses has tattoos on his hands, neck and face. He’s a low-level drug user and drug dealer.

One tattoo under his left cheekbone reads Le Loup. When Milla falls for him and brings him home, her parents have to decide whether to chase off this handsome wolf or let him into their lives. The movie that comes to mind is Neil Armfield’s Candy (2006), starring Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish and adapted by Armfield and Luke Davies from his novel.

When Moses meets the parents and is asked what he does for a job, he smiles and says, “I’m not ready to be functional”. Henry softly replies, “That doesn’t mean you have to be dysfunctional”. He’s looking at Moses but he could be talking to anyone at the table, including himself.

What Henry and Anna do, in fits and starts, and full of doubts, goes to that question of how to be a good parent. What Milla and Moses do goes to the idea of putting life first.

Kalnejais’s script feels true to life. There is humour, too, as there has to be. When Henry and Anna wonder if Milla and Moses are having sex, the look on their faces is perfect. Mendelsohn and Davis bring quiet star quality to their roles, but it is the younger actors, particularly Scanlen, who bring the screen alive. You may have seen Scanlen as Beth March in Greta Gerwig’s recent adaptation of Little Women. Wallace had a lead role in the TV series Romper Stomper.

This 118-minute movie is a bit disjointed at times and there are some scenes that could have been cut or shortened. However, when it’s at its most powerful, especially in the final two scenes, it comes close to being something special.