Deciduous Teeth: An Alternative Life Song

It's just before the film season of heartlessness that the main character of the film is the coming of a kind of girl's disease. When death is near and inevitable, they will encounter a considerate and handsome boy and have an unexpected first love. Therefore, the young girls can try their best to love once in the last time, which seems to dispel some regret brought by death and add a romantic aftertaste to their early death. English films alone can find three movies, namely, "the throbbing heart", "now is good" and "the fault in our stars", and construct the story in this way. At the latest Venice Film Festival, Australian director Shannon Murphy's maiden feature film babyteeth also tells the story of an unforgettable love experience at the end of her life. However, the film breaks through the conventional presuppositions of such films and unfolds the alternative life posture of a 15-year-old Australian girl.

The opening of "baby teeth" is Mila's love for Moses at first sight. On the platform of the station, a ragged, acne ridden Street gangster appears next to Mila waiting for the bus. His seemingly indifferent attitude immediately attracts Mila. In other films of the same theme, the heroines often have short, well-designed hair, and the beautiful boys they meet are always good at heart. In the movie, the character of "the slut boy" is almost not the most beautiful one in love.

The film does not focus on how the sick girl meets the beautiful boy and gains a rare life experience in love with him, but shows a period of time that she and the characters around her go through at the same time. The posters of the three films mentioned above all show a young man and a woman close to each other, while "baby teeth" chooses a picture of Mila sitting alone by the pool and looking up into the sky. Her blue wig and longing eyes conceal her identity as a patient. Mila is the only focus. She is strongly loyal to her feelings. She will dance happily when she is in good health. She will fight with Moses as if she is in good health. At the same time, she never conceals her feelings about her illness. She bravely pursues love and expresses her pain directly.

No family can function properly when a member needs to face a major illness. "Deciduous teeth" gives the family of three Mila rich space, Mila's parents are not strong Superman, they all need psychotropic drugs to regulate their emotions and mentality. They do not keep the family order from their heart. They bear the anxiety caused by the division of family work. They also need to deal with the possible deviant behaviors with other opposite sex. They have all kinds of worries about being parents, and they have the seven emotions and six desires of normal people. They don't like the bad child Moses, but they respect Mila's choice and judgment. There are no perfect people in "baby teeth". Until Mila quietly left, everyone still failed to solve their personal problems and fell into their own tangled emotions. In her first novel, Shannon Murphy skillfully deals with the anti inspirational and anti sensationalism. Life is always like a mess that can't be rationalized, and the people in it can never be ready for the disappearance of life.

The film uses bright colors to reject the haze of death. Australia is colorful and sunny. Mila from a middle-class family does not need to worry about the cost of treatment. But it's not a fake fairy tale wrapped in sugar. Mila's health is good and bad. Her illness doesn't make sense, and no one believes in miracles. She will eventually leave, and the people who love her really can not pay much for her. The frequent subtitles are the author's notes on the living conditions of the characters. The loose life slices are casually assembled, and a sense of balance is gradually established, which is full of longing in despair and coexistence of sadness and joy.

Vitality is tenacious. After the joyful party, Mila could no longer resist the pain of her body. She prayed to Moses to help her extricate herself from this life with a pillow. But after a struggle, not only did she not leave the world, but her baby teeth finally fell off, announcing her growth, and she was spending the night with Moses to further mature. Unfortunately, death happened rapidly. Mila didn't wake up from this special night to experience her life when she grew up. She didn't even have time to say goodbye to the people she loved.

"Baby teeth" ends with Mila playing on the beach with her parents and her favorite boy. Before that, the film has been linear narrative, so this happy scene is more like Mira's long cherished wish that has not been fulfilled in heaven. In this surreal dream, she entrusted her parents to take care of Moses and told them to treat each other well. She said she would be happy to be part of the sky, and then for the first time, the camera showed Mila watching her loved ones, who had been cared for and cared for in her lifetime. The film ends in an empty mirror aimed at the beach, and the fierce life story is calmed down. The dead will melt in the air, accompanying and comforting those who have been associated with her.

?