Milla Finlay is a 16-year-old girl in Sydney who is living with cancer and trying to feel like a normal teenager. She meets Moses, a 23-year-old drug user, and falls into a fast, risky romance that her parents fear. Her parents are loving but troubled, and their home becomes a place of pills, fights, secrets, and uneasy care. The film moves between dark comedy, romance, and grief, and it ends with Milla facing death while the people around her try to keep living.
The film focuses on Milla’s wish to control her own life, body, love, and choices. She refuses to be seen only as a sick child, and she pushes against her parents’ rules about sex, drugs, and Moses. The story gives her rebellion a warm, sometimes joyful tone, but it also shows the harm of addiction, bad choices, pain, and loss. Milla’s final lesson is about letting go, caring for others, and finding a way to live honestly before time runs out.
Community feedback
Was our 22% Woke rating accurate?
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for Babyteeth.
Woke representation / casting
Not present. The main cast shows an ordinary Australian family and nearby characters. The film does not present casting as a diversity or identity statement.
0%
Woke political dialogue
Not present. The film has no repeated lines about identity politics, DEI, activism, or party politics. Its comments about labels and rules stay inside the family story.
0%
Identity-driven story themes
Milla repeatedly pushes to control her own body, love, and time. She rejects being treated only as a sick child and chooses parties, sex, and a risky older boyfriend. The story treats that rebellion with sympathy, which mildly challenges strict family and sexual rules. The film does not connect her choices to a wider identity or activist cause.
24%
Western institutional / cultural critique
Milla challenges parental control and the idea that adults should make every choice for a sick child. Her parents bend rules about an older drug user, sex, and prescription drugs because they see her happiness. The film treats propriety as limited in the face of death. This is a mild challenge to traditional family and sexual norms, not a broad attack on Western institutions.
14%
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant. Babyteeth adapts Rita Kalnejais’s own stage play rather than a franchise or real history. No identity-based change to an established character is shown or reported.
0%
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
Not present. Major reviews and visible audience discussions focus on cancer, age gap, drugs, sex, and family grief. No major complaint says the film pushes woke, DEI, or identity politics. The evidence is limited because this was a small art film.
0%
Creator track record context
The cached creator scores range from 4 to 56, with the main team in the low to middle range. The cached notes show a recurring interest in women-led stories and women filmmakers. The notes do not show a strong activist, partisan, or DEI campaign by the key team. This gives the title a low to mild creator track record context score.
30%
Production
Movie · 2016
A week in the life of Paterson, a poet bus driver, and his wife Laura, a very creative artist, who live in Paterson, New Jersey, hometown of many famous poets and artists.
Movie · 2016
The story of a young man who arrives in Hollywood during the 1930s hoping to work in the film industry, falls in love, and finds himself swept up in the vibrant café society that…
Movie · 2020
A teenager lives out the hilarious and often tragic consequences of being lethally attractive, until he meets a girl with a congenital defect.
Movie · 2023
Two romantic burnouts, Jane and Will, are immediately drawn to each other at a mutual friend’s wedding. After a disastrous hookup in the coatroom, the two spend the next 24 hours…
Movie · 2019
Charlie suffers from a serious disease that causes acute narcolepsy whenever he is happy. Although he develops a variety of techniques to deny himself pleasure and deal with his…
Movie · 2023
The dramatic comedy is based on the true story of writer and pinball wizard Roger Sharpe, chronicling his journey to overturn New York City’s 35-year ban on pinball.
Movie · 2016
From Jane Austen’s novella, the beautiful and cunning Lady Susan Vernon visits the estate of her in-laws to wait out colorful rumors of her dalliances and to find husbands for…
Movie · 2016
A boy growing up in Dublin during the 1980s escapes his strained family life by starting a band to impress the mysterious girl he likes.
