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Interview: Shannon Murphy on Charting the Wild Emotional Terrain of Babyteeth

Murphy discusses how she steered the film away from weepy clichés and toward an authentic portrayal of teenage experience.

Shannon Murphy
Photo: IFC Films

Feature-length directorial debuts typically trade in big tonal swings, but most do so without the intentionality of Shannon Murphy’s Babyteeth. The work buzzes with the restless spirit of its protagonist, Milla (Eliza Scanlen), a precocious 15-year-old who must reckon with the sobering reality of losing her body to cancer just as she begins to gain her sense of self as a young adult. Murphy’s aesthetic choices mirror Milla’s turbulent mental state, and the film remains in a constant state of reinvention before our eyes for two hours as it unfurls “a story about how good it is not to be dead yet,” to use Murphy’s own words.

Babyteeth’s generosity of spirit extends not only Milla, but to a full ensemble of characters navigating all sorts of ups and downs on the interconnected rollercoasters of illness and addiction. Milla’s volatility and vulnerability ripple outward to her psychiatrist father, Henry (Ben Mendelsohn), depressed pill-popping mother, Anna (Essie Davis), and the drug dealer turned passionate flame, Moses (Toby Wallace), who crashes into her life. Murphy’s emotionally astute direction harmonizes this quartet as they grapple openly with the joys and tragedies they endure both collectively and individually—often times out of sync.

In a conversation with Murphy this month, we discussed how she imposed order and control on the wild emotional terrain of Babyteeth as well as how she steered the film away from weepy clichés and toward an authentic portrayal of teenage experience.

You’ve said that your ambition for the film was to find a language that matched the uniqueness of the script. How do you go about moving from idea to action?

Yeah, I think it’s a combination of things, but particularly picking the right heads of departments for this film. And we spent a lot of time talking about how that duality of comedy and tragedy needed to be in every frame. A good example of that is at the birthday party with Milla. There’s obviously so much joy and playfulness in those frames, but there’s also really subtle decorations from the Day of the Dead everywhere. Always, even just for ourselves, knowing that we had blended those two ideas constantly into the work and making sure that we were always doing something that was juxtaposing what was going on at the time. Like making sure that, if we were going to use music, it wasn’t just necessarily doing what was already in the frame and trying to pinch ourselves to constantly capture the incredible energy that these young characters had, but also it’s a very stressful time of crisis for a family. The performances, the way that we would do that was to always give ourselves a range of options of how the scene could play out and not only be wedded to one idea. That was both from me and from the actors. We would have our decisions, and we would capture those. But then, after that, we would give ourselves room to be experimental so that in the edit, I could play with when a moment might seem comedic that could become more dramatic or vice versa.

So the tone was both worked out on set and in the editing room?

I think it was definitely done beforehand, like it was on the page to begin with. And then it was something that was discussed at length in pre-production before we even arrived, so that everybody organically had it in them ready to go. But I do like having the option in the edit. I don’t want to think that I’m arrogant enough to know exactly how this should play out. I want to be able to challenge myself in the editing process.

You’ve said that you didn’t consciously try to clean up the sound and leaned into some of the messiness of the production. Did you have a method for balancing the some of these more chaotic elements with the control that we end up seeing in the final edit?

These days, everybody wants to clean up sound perfectly, and I think it’s actually kind of tipped into a territory where it doesn’t sound real to me. I like more of a documentary-sounding world because it makes you feel like you’re much more embedded in that story as an audience. And also with this particular story, because it’s set in Sydney in the middle of summer, we have very loud birds and cicadas, and it’s an intense, oppressive noise. I wanted to capture that precisely because it was 100% in every single guide track that we recorded, but also because I just think if you’re going to make something authentic, you do have to lean into what you captured and work with that. It was a lot of that. Also, I watched Breaking the Waves, which is a film that I love, and that sound world is so messy. But I do think a big part of that is responsible for making you feel so much, and I don’t want to manipulate people too much through music or dialogue. I prefer to do it in ways that give you a more of a holistic experience. And I think sound design is a really incredible way to do that.

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Not until the very end did it really sink in that this is an “illness movie.” Were you conscious of tropes around films with a sick protagonist and having to fight to make cancer something that might challenge and threaten Milla but not define her entirely?

Yeah, completely. And I think that also came from talking to professionals who work with children in those circumstances. They read the script, and they felt like it was overall really accurate. Because rather than these young people wallowing in what’s going on, they’re still wanting to push back and rebel and live their lives at a really intense and rapid pace in many ways. But I’m not someone who really sort of enjoys those films that you’re talking about. I do feel they’ve got a place and an audience, and that’s excellent. But it’s not my reality of how people behave and how the world looks. To me, I am always striving to capture something that is, of course, entertaining and, to me, often theatrical because my background is in theater, but that still feels deeply authentic and relatable. Because it’s so real and messy and honest.

And also, I made this film for teenagers. I hope that they do watch it and really feel like they’re incredibly well represented. But I did make this with an adult audience in mind.

When you’re making a film that might have two audiences like that, do you think about talking to them on two separate tracks? Or do you think that they can watch the same thing and just get something different out of it?

I mean, I think when I was a teenager, I wasn’t watching teen films. I was watching adult films because, like most of us, you don’t want to be talked down to, and I think that’s what’s really important. And in many ways, I do think teenagers could watch this because I’m not underestimating how much they know and how intelligent they are. Their lives are really complicated. I watched a play many years ago called Once and for All We’re Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and Listen by a Belgian performance company. I remember standing up into that play just like wanting to scream. I was so excited to watch something that really captured my feelings as a teenager. I did think about that quite a lot when I was directing Babyteeth. I wanted it to feel real so that people could be transported to their teenage years, or teenagers could go, “Yeah, that’s honest, that feels like me. It doesn’t feel like a film that’s made by someone who’s a lot older and doesn’t understand.” I used to teach teenagers acting for a long time, and I hope that that I’ve connected to that. It helps having two really amazing young performers, and that you’re also scrutinizing you know whether this is believable or not. And then Eliza and Toby believed in these characters.

I’d seen Eliza in projects before, but I had never seen Toby in anything and was shocked to learn that he wasn’t a first-time actor that you picked up outside of conventional casting channels because he had this raw, almost animalistic kind of magnetism. How did you go about channeling that energy? Because it’s such a vivid portrayal of the teenage infatuation that you get in that emotional rush you’ve been referring to.

Toby’s got that energy. You meet him and you’re very quickly wrapped in his aura—that kinetic, animalistic energy you’re talking about. He’s also a very smart, soft, and gentle man. And I knew that Moses was really complicated in this way. He was very generous, lovable, yet incredibly flawed—and, at times, extremely aggressive. With Toby, he’s actually been acting for a long time. I mean, he’d been to the Venice Film Festival before this film, and he’s done a lot of television. He’s been acting since he was a child. It’s so great that you felt that he was almost street-casted because I think that’s just a testament to what an exceptional performer he is. He really gets it. He’s very in the moment, very spontaneous. He and I share a real love of the way that we like to work. It’s so freeing. [He’s] constantly playing with ideas in the take, he really likes to stay fresh and in the moment. And, actually, Ben Mendelsohn is really similar. He also loves directing himself, so he’s got a real understanding of what I’m doing when I’m talking to him. He’s just a really amazing, malleable performer.

In most teen-centered movies, we don’t really experience adults in any capacity other than how they relate to their children, so I was surprised at how much time we get to spend with Milla’s parents here. Why was it important for you to keep their perspective so prominently in the film, and how did you go about balancing their arcs in the story?

As a teenager, you’re a product of these people who’ve really helped craft who you are in many ways. So it was very important to understand where the parents were at. They’re in incredible emotional turmoil. And also, how does it affect their relationship [to their children]? How do they start treating Milla differently as a result? I really wanted to explore this triangle of three people that have such an intense relationship, and to have an only child in this in this circumstance. It always really fascinating to me because it was more of an ensemble piece. With Anna and Henry, I think maybe sometimes we don’t delve into that because you don’t want to think too much about what happens afterwards when the parents are left alone. But for me, that’s what the most amazing and also harrowing part of the story. You need to know those people to really understand what that means when it’s just them and what the future really does look and feel like. Will they survive it?

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Marshall Shaffer

Marshall Shaffer is a New York-based film journalist. His interviews, reviews, and other commentary on film also appear regularly in Slashfilm, Decider, and Little White Lies.

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