Films for Lockdown: Babyteeth

Babyteeth is a film that got a lot of press during the first lockdown, its Australian actors still on the marketing trail for the film and stuck in LA (no better place to be stuck in my opinion!)

This film is one of the best I’ve seen this year. Do not be put off by the story and also, I must admit to not liking any other review that I have seen or read so ignore them, and take my word for it, you must see this film.

It is about a 16 year old girl, who we meet on a railway platform where she bumps into a cute junkie and we soon learn she is being treated for a blood cancer. So far so dreadful - I would usually avoid a weepie teen romance like this but it is so much more than that.

We meet her psychiatrist father and concert pianist mother, who gave up her career to be a mother, in their beautiful home full of life and greenery. We meet the girl’s music teacher and a pregnant new neighbour, who enjoys a fag in her last trimester. And, sidebar, the cutest chubby East Asian boy ever.

The film is full of love and generosity to its characters, which we all need at the moment. There is colour, humour, loneliness, rejection, beautiful imagery, a great script, grief, incredible music, modern and classical, substance abuse, and above all, a girl who knows she is dying.

You really can’t tell that this wonderful Australian indie was adapted from a stage play (apart from perhaps the name of film which was a teeny bit corny, although I would bet a fiver my partner thought was incredible).

The only fault with the film is a scene at a party which I could have done without (no one ever in the history of humankind has managed to do a good party or club scene except for maybe Human Traffic) but it’s a fat five out of five from me. Enjoy!