Mubi Monday: Babyteeth (2019)

I have found myself saying this quite often lately, but here we have another movie that takes some very familiar elements and blends them in a way that allows them to feel relatively unique. Babyteeth has a married couple who are going through a rough patch, it has a young woman being quite captivated by the personality of someone who would be labelled as "from the wrong side of the tracks", and there's also a storyline about someone struggling to live a normal life while being affected by cancer.

Eliza Scanlen plays Milla Finlay, a schoolgirl unlikely to see full adulthood, thanks to the cancer attacking her body. Her parents (Anna, a musician, played by Essie Davis, and Henry, a psychiatrist, played by Ben Mendelsohn) are struggling to find the right balance between protecting their daughter and allowing her to enjoy all that she can in her life, which is why they end up being more patient and considerate when Milla brings home a new friend, an older drug dealer named Moses (Toby Wallace). A number of the main characters here use drugs for different reasons, but there might be a time when they can instead find their high/calibration in some other way. 

The first, and only (at this time), film directed by Shannon Murphy, working from a screenplay by Rita Kalnejas, adapting her own play, Babyteeth is one of those little films that seems unremarkable, and perhaps even a bit trite, until you start to be won over by the power of the many effective moments scattered throughout the runtime. On the one hand, I wish someone had pared this down by a good 10-20 minutes (it clocks in close to the 2-hour mark). On the other hand, there are no scenes I would necessarily vote to throw on the scrapheap. This is a story that is crafted well and lifted up by a great cast.

Davis and Mendelsohn are almost so appreciated nowadays that it seems redundant to praise their performances, but they absolutely make the most of material that gives them great individual moments, as well as some great moments together. There's no way to single one of them out, and they somehow manage to even take things up a notch in some powerful final scenes. Scanlen is perfect in her role, managing to convey her positivity and quirkiness without being stuck in a "manic pixie dream girl" rut. The constant presence of her cancer works against that, of course, but that shouldn't take away from how well she pitches her performance. Then we have Wallace, giving the kind of performance that makes me immediately want to check out more from his already-surprisingly-expansive filmography. Emily Barclay also does well to make a strong impression with her relatively small amount of screentime.

I enjoyed Babyteeth for every minute of the runtime. It sets everything up quickly enough, allowing viewers to spend most of their time watching the main characters connecting and interacting in both good and bad ways. The best thing about it is the way that it seems to hold back from judging people who find themselves in an unimaginably difficult situation, creating space and time for self-reflection as we ponder the beauty and ugliness of a universe that contains more wonders and delights than any of us could hope to see in a century, never mind whatever limited lifespan we're allotted by a cosmic roll of the dice.

9/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share 

Shudder Saturday: Boys In The Trees (2016)

Writer-director Nicholas Verso has crafted quite the little gem here, and my biggest worry is that it will be marketed as a horror movie to horror fans who won't quite appreciate the mix of teen angst and fantastical elements. Not that horror fans aren't often an inclusive and accepting crowd, but rather some films are sold in such a way that expectations are created/raised, without a note about the film sitting within the horror genre without really being a more straightforward horror. It happens quite a lot, which is why I often try to note it in reviews, hoping that I can recommend something I liked a lot without misrepresenting it to others.

The film is all about Corey (Toby Wallace) and Jonah (Gulliver McGrath), two teens who are now moving in very different circles after they spent so much time being firm friends. Corey now hangs about with Jango (Justin Holborow) and his little gang, while Jonah is a bit of an outcast, and often the victim of bullying from Jango and co. Corey is also now starting to view himself differently as he considers how he appears to Romany (Mitzi Ruhlmann), a young woman he is interested in. Anyway, events conspire to bring Corey and Jonah together for a walk homeward on Halloween, 1997. Jonah starts to tell some spooky tales, but the scariest thing in the night may be the perils of growing up under the constant weight of peer pressure.

Clocking in with a runtime of just under two hours, Boys In The Trees is a film not rushing viewers towards any kind of spectacular finale. In fact, if you don't predict at least one major moment here then you haven't watched many horror movies at all. It is, to use a cliché, more about the journey than the destination. But that journey is an almost perfect to enjoy on a dark night in October.

There are things that Verso gets wrong, especially when it comes to some of the dialogue scattered throughout the script, but they are all easy to forgive when he gets so much right. The tone throughout, whether it's the mid-to-late '90s vibe, and soundtrack, or the crisp and chilly darkness of an outdoor walk on Halloween, is perfect. The cast, and their performances, all work brilliantly, and help to make it easier to accept the uneven way in which things are weighted, in terms of emotional impact. You also get occasional individual moments that showcase the blending of reality/memories with strange characters and shadows that feel a bit too lively. More of those moments would have been welcome, but the way they come and go emphasise the push and pull between the two leads, one being more reluctant to look back at the past and remember the sense of magic than the other.

Wallace and McGrath work well together, feeling more like brothers at times than friends (which is absolutely in line with how best friends do feel), and they're even good enough to make the sillier lines in the script still feel acceptable. Holborow does what he can with his character, but his actions make him impossible to like whenever he's onscreen. If there's one major flaw, it's that Jango is so constant and forceful in his bullying that you find it harder and harder to believe that Corey would have ever fallen in with him and his crowd. Ruhlmann does good work, and her character feels very much like the kind of young woman who could be both cool enough and also more mature to make some teenage wannabe-Romeo want to change the error of his ways.

Weaving between dreams and nightmares, both real and imagined, Boys In The Trees is a wonderful concoction that taps right into memories many of us will have, even if we've buried them deep in the recesses of our minds. It's well worth your time, and emanates that special Halloween atmosphere from almost every night-time scene.

8/10

https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews