52 Films by Women Vol 5. 33. BABYTEETH (Director: Shannon Murphy)
Contains spoilers Adapted by Rita Kalnejais from her 2012 play and directed by Shannon Murphy, Babyteeth is an antidote to Love Story . Films about men who fall in love with women who have fatal diseases inevitably end badly, but usually tug on the heartstrings. We imagine the life the young couple could have enjoyed together and blub uncontrollably. We empathise, which is to say we relate their loss to any loss that we have experienced, be it of a person or family pet (but usually a person). Some of us identify, because we have had the sad, sickening misfortune of losing the partner we love in the prime of youth. Set in a leafy suburb of Sydney, Australia , Babyteeth elicits neither identification nor empathy because it is nihilistic. It posits suicide at the beginning and suggests a mercy killing at the end. The main character, sixteen-year-old Milla (Eliza Scanlen) lives in her own bubble of inevitability. At the beginning, we see her in her school uniform trembling on a...