Babyteeth is summed up pretty fast: A young teenage girl is falling in love with a drug dealer and her parents don't like that.
Babyteeth was a movie i didn't really looked forward to, when i heard it will be screened in Venice. But for me it was one of the biggest surprise.
It has a nice heartwarming story, focusing on family, love and the big changes in life.
The story is kind of mind-blowing in some twists, especially if you only know the plot-summary above and the characters are great. The main character: Milla is beautiful crafted and everybody can understand her actions...okay, maybe not all of them, but the movie often asks the viewer to ask yourself: How would you act in this situations? What would you do?
It is a movie, which extends your view on love, life and family.
Her parents Henry and Anna are just very warm and nice persons, they create a beautiful and familiar atmosphere for the viewer. You get the feeling you are sucked into the situation and can understand them.
Her big love Moses is just like your typical drug dealer guy, but what makes the difference here to other movie drug dealers is the character development. You see yourself coming of Age with this character as the story moves on. You start to feel with him and understand him.
So to sum it up at this point: Story, characters and of course the actors are great. (the award for best newcomer for Moses actor Toby Wallace was so well deserved!) The ending ist heartbreaking and so beautiful. I loved it!
Okay, so why just 8 points?
For me this movie has big leaks, when it comes to cinematography and pace. The cinematography was just normal and never blew me away. The pace of the story and within this the directing was too unbalanced in pace and continuity. Many parts of the movie felt very slow and boring. 20 Minutes less, would have been better.
So finally: I loved the movie, as a character movie, telling a story about love and life. But it fails to become a all around great movie, because of the leaks in the technical aspects.
