THE VIEWING GUIDE
DIRECTOR SHANNON MURPHY on her bruising-but-beautiful Australian drama, about a teen’s final days with cancer.
Director Shannon Murphy on Babyteeth.
DANCING WITH DEATH
opens with an off-kilter meet cute. Moses (Toby Wallace), sporting a floral shirt, rat-tail and serious case of pinkeye, tumbles past Milla (Eliza Scanlen) and nearly collides with a moving train. “That was the first time we were establishing Moses’ look, as this very sexual thing that’s just come into Milla’s life,” Murphy explains. “He gives her this electricity that she hasn’t felt before.” Wallace — who Murphy discovered in the TV adaptation of Romper Stomper — was cast for his caring nature and playfulness, even if he represents the opposite to Milla at first. “He’s fearless about death in that moment. He encapsulates all of the things that she’s afraid of.”
THE THERAPIST’S COUCH
A husband medicating his wife might not be the sign of a conventional marriage, but Milla’s dad Henry (Ben Mendelsohn) and mum Anna (Essie Davis) make it work. In fact, their opening scene culminates in a tender lunchtime quickie. “That was the first thing I shot with Essie and Ben,” says Murphy, who commends the pair’s approach to a scene that involved “a lot of choreography and sex and eating sandwiches”. One sandwich, in particular, would end up as a sex casualty. “Essie got so caught up in the moment that she scratched up the sandwich and threw it in the opposite direction to the bin. I love that; when the clumsiness of life is captured so authentically.”
THE HEAD-SHAVING
Now enamoured with Moses, Milla has him shave her hair down to a patchy crop. “We knew that this was an important moment for the audience, but for me, it was more interesting that Eliza then had to shave her head an hour later in her trailer,” says Murphy. “She told me about how people reacted differently to her when she went out afterwards, like she got a lot of sympathetic looks. It was a very moving experience for her.”
DANGER! HIGH VOLTAGE
A neighbourly good deed ends in disaster — or more specifically, electrocution — for poor Henry. “That scene was difficult because we were running out of time,” Murphy remembers. “But Ben still does all his own stuff, so he was falling all over the floor. We had to swing the camera round really fast to get both of their reactions. It was chaos.” The neighbour in question is the heavily pregnant Toby (Emily Barclay). “Henry gravitates towards her because she’s at the beginning of an experience that he’s about to lose.”
PARTY TIME
After sneaking out of the window, Milla steals away to a neon-tinged loft party with Moses.
“Toby chose the music that Eliza originally danced to at the party,” Murphy remembers. “He chose ‘Twist And Shout’, which gave the scene such a great vibe.” The filmmaker asked herself, “What’s the coolest party that I’ve ever been to?” when creating the scene. “It was one that had a performance element to it. The performer for this piece was Shannon Dooley, an actress who has alopecia in real-life. She’s got this real Grace Jones vibe. I wanted her to give Milla strength.”
THE PERFECT DRESS
In the run-up to Milla’s school formal, Anna gifts her a satin, aquamarine prom dress and the pair enjoy a treasured if short-lived moment of normality. The quest for a timeless-looking dress was lengthy, as Murphy recalls: “We looked at so many vintage dresses, and in the end decided to have one custom-made.” Atop the dress, Milla sports a turquoise manga wig, one of several that she rotates depending on her mood. Another wig was inspired by Amy Winehouse’s unforgettable barnet. “I especially loved the Amy Winehouse wig,” she remembers. “There’s a great shot of Amy that we found where she’s blonde, and it’s bold but also playful.”
A BIRTHDAY DUET
Milla’s birthday celebration peaks with a duet with her mother; her on the violin, Anna on the piano. Murphy loved watching the characters reconnect after a turbulent spell: “They’re at a stage where they can no longer speak with language, but they can speak with music.” Attending the party is Milla’s makeshift family of friends and neighbours. “Children with cancer are often ostracised and called ‘the cancer kid’ at school,” Murphy explains. “This misfit family really represents who you want to be there at a time of crisis.”
THE SEX DEATH SCENE
Later that night, Milla makes a heart-rending plea to Moses to end her suffering and an unsuccessful suffocation ensues, followed by Milla losing her virginity. Murphy — who lovingly refers to this chapter as “the sex death scene” — decided that Eliza should be smothered herself for authenticity.
“I did a lot of research and spoke with fight choreographers,” she says. “We agreed that the safest thing instead of building a contraption under the pillow would be for Eliza to turn her head and breathe through her mouth. So when she came up gasping for air, she was really in that moment.”
SOLACE BY THE SEA
Babyteeth’s final scene jumps to an earlier moment in time, when Moses and the family enjoy some rare respite on the beach. “I’m really grateful that it was an overcast day and the sea was really rough,” says Murphy. “It was a nightmare for continuity, but I didn’t want it to be this perfect sunny day.” The imperfections that imbue Milla’s story seem to satisfy the director the most. “There was this wonderful moment where a random guy with his dog walked into the background, as, like, a surprise extra,” she remembers. “It was about finding that playfulness, and it sounds so obvious but it was about keeping it real.”
SOME FILMS SEEM to go out of their way to make you think you’ve already seen them — boasting naggingly familiar thumbnail synopses, soundalike titles, lookalike promo art. The horrorscott suspense field currently offers two films called I See You... plus, just for luck, another called I Still See You.
The earlier I See You , directed by Seth Fuller and Scott Hussion, is a retitling of 14 Cameras, a sequel to 13 Cameras — a stalker/ surveillance film seen in the UK as Slumlord.
Character actor Neville Archambault shambles, drools and mutters again as a sleazoid who sets up hidden cameras in an Airbnb-type rental property, keeps a survivor of the first film chained in the basement, and has a nasty internet-auction business sideline. Slumlord
was uncomfortable viewing, but this is mostly just unpleasant — a ‘15 Cameras’/‘slumlord 3’/ ‘I See You 2’ is threatened.
Adam Randall’s I See You is classier, telling dovetailing stories in different sub-genres: it’s a hider-in-the-house film and a cop-huntspsycho-who’s-closer-to-home-than-you-think movie. Cop Greg (Jon Tenney) has issues with an unfaithful wife (Helen Hunt) and a sulky teen (Judah Lewis) even as a case similar to one he solved earlier suggests he busted the wrong man — plus there are paranormal or prankster presences in his large, rambling, creepy ideal home. The second act pulls a narrative trick, looping back and retelling the story so far from a radically different angle, that keeps the interest up — though the last few twists are heavily signposted.
Speer’s slick I Still See You is based on Daniel Waters’ novel Break My Heart 1,000 Times (a title you wouldn’t get mixed up with anything else) and has a backdrop huge and complicated enough for a multi-season TV series. “Ten years ago”, an event ground zeroed on a Chicago laboratory vaporised a whole lot of folks, turned the city into a no-go area, and led to people having to get used to the presence of ‘remnants’ — ghosts who appear regularly doing mundane things (reading a paper, shovelling snow). Teenager Veronica (Bella Thorne) suspects a buff yet sinister spook is threatening her, though conventional wisdom is that remnants can’t interact with the living. While fending off a possible supernatural serial killer she explores the larger, strange world.
In the wake of Get Out, topical horror with a Black Lives Matter twist has emerged as a busy sub-genre. Malik Vitthal’s Body Cam and Jacob Estes’ Don’t Let Go both follow African-american cop protagonists through the aftermaths of personal tragedies that raise a) the spectre of murderous police corruption and b) actual spectres (or related paraphenomena). In Body Cam , patrolwoman Renee (Mary J. Blige) investigates the extremely gruesome deaths of fellow officers who are targeted by a ghostly shadow. In Don’t Let Go , which riffs on the well-remembered Frequency, detective David Oyelowo gets mobile phone calls from his recently murdered niece (Storm Reid, from A Wrinkle In Time) — and tries to use a line of communication with the past to change his miserable present for one in which he’s saved the girl and solved a tricky case that’s struck close to home.
The Twilight Zone elements are wellhandled, though the mysteries are on the thin side — but Blige and Oyelowo, whose CV tends to run to dignified supporting parts in earnest dramas, get rare, welcome meaty lead roles and deliver quality cop-on-the-edge-ofa-crack-up performances.