Writer-director Mihai Mincan told the room at the Venice Film Festival that the idea of Milk Teeth came from a real case of a girl who disappeared carrying a bucket of walnut shells to the garbage. His movie also makes an interesting companion piece to another film from the festival, the Saudi Arabian film Hijra, another period movie about a young girl in a controlling society whose older sister goes missing. Romania in 1989 was in some upheaval, which is an understatement, but Milk Teeth is not really interested in using the revolution as a metaphor. It is interested in the idea of alienation and how a person copes, or doesn’t, when the world turns upside down. Especially when you are only ten and you still don’t always know which way is up.
Her name was Alina and she shared a bedroom with her younger sister Maria (the incredible Emma Ioana Mogos). Her parents, Cezaria (Marina Palii) and Peter (Igor Babiac), love their girls, which helps make up for the lack of money. The kids of the apartment complex have nothing but some old tires and their imaginations for a playground, but they are clever kids who are mostly friends and anyway it’s perfectly safe. Until it isn’t. But soon it’s more than Alina’s absence that’s a problem. Cezaria searches for her daughter by herself, which in this time and place is dangerous. The local policeman (István Téglás, here the walking embodiment of world-weary) is sympathetic, but any challenge to the authorities, even from a grieving mother, is too dangerous to be allowed. Instead he comes into their kitchen and drinks tea in silence while Cezaria pours out her anguish. Maria stands by the window and silently observes. She’s a good girl, and she knows what she saw when her sister walked past with the bucket, but of course the adults know better. Later she finds a walnut in the kitchen that Alina must have dropped and pockets it without telling anybody. She watches, and wonders, and spends a deal of time practicing her skills – handwriting, gymnastics, throwing shadows onto the wall – by herself. She communicates with her friend Adrian (Victor-Ioan Rogobete), whose bedroom in the apartment next door shares a wall with hers, through knocks. And occasionally she does the very brave thing of going to search for her sister herself.
The music by Marius Leftărache and Nicolas Becker and George Chiper-Lillemark’s cinematography combine with Miss Mogos’ thoughtful face to create an impressionistic experience of great power. You can feel the dirt under the feet of the giggling kids. You share their apprehension as they explore a nearby abandoned factory in case Alina is there. When Maria must run, the sound mix fills our ears with her hitched breathing, putting us virtually inside her head. And it is never exploitative as Maria learns how the world is shaped and what she is allowed to do about it.
Mr. Mincan was very clear that the metaphor of milk teeth – not baby teeth – is not only about the getting of wisdom. It is also about the things that are left behind as we grow up and change into something new. As we move and change and forget, there are always fragments of our former selves scattered in our wake that we sometimes remember in strangely vivid flashes. Your friends spinning you around on the playground. A stolen cream cake. Your mother’s fingers braiding your hair. There are always traces left behind, and if you are very lucky there will be people smart enough to understand them correctly. But not everyone is lucky, or rich, or telling the truth. Milk Teeth is about a revolution after all, but the quiet one inside your head as you figure out your place in the world.
You can have the best will in the world and still be unable to do a single thing about the fact that your sister is gone, your mother cries, your friends get mean, your father stays away. And while the adults smoke their cigarettes and the world spins around the sun there will be watchful young girls with clear faces and intelligent eyes considering the shape they will take as they grow up. It will be too thoughtful a movie for some, but staying with Milk Teeth will provide some astonishing insights if you know how to look.
Milk Teeth recently played at the Venice Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the Venice site for the title.
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