TEETH (2007)
September 8th 2008 03:59
TEETH (2007)
Starring: Jess Weixler, John Hensley, Hale Appleman, Ashley Springer
Written By: Mitchell Lichtenstein
Directed By: Mitchell Lichtenstein
Playing out like an anti-Candy, Teeth stars Jess Weixler as Dawn, an abstinent teen, who is forced to come to terms with her sexuality when she discovers she is not like other girls.
Teeth opens with a Dawn and her brother Brad as young children playing in a paddling pool. Their parents have just married, making them step-brother and sister. Brad says he’ll show her his if she’ll show him hers. We don’t see what happens, but Brad comes away with a permanent scar on his index finger hinting at what is to come.
We then cut to several years later with Dawn now in high school. She preaches to groups of teens about the virtue of abstinence. You wear the abstinence ring on your finger until you can swap it for a gold marriage band. Things get complicated when Dawn meets Tobey (Hale Appleman), who is also part of the abstinence group. She believes she has found the perfect boy in Tobey; that he is The One because he believes in abstinence too and wants to wait until marriage before he has sex with Dawn - or so he says. Teenage hormones run strong and Dawn finds it hard to keep her abstinence promise while dreaming of marriage to Tobey.
Things go horribly wrong when Dawn goes swimming with Tobey, whose desire for sex gets the better of him, and in an unpleasant scene, forces himself on Dawn. But Dawn is not like other girls; her vagina has teeth, and instinctively, in reaction to Tobey’s violence, she amputates his member.
After this the film follows a similar course to Candy, as Dawn is subsequently preyed upon and manipulated by any number of men out to take advantage of her. At times it is quite harrowing to watch. But unlike Candy, Dawn fights back.
As she gradually comes to realise exactly how she is different to other women, Dawn also realises that she can consciously control her other set of teeth. Not every sexual encounter has to be deadly. The point is also made in the film that high school students in the sex-education class are allowed to see a full-page diagram of a penis, but the diagram of the female sexual organs is covered up by a giant sticker because it is deemed unfit for the students’ to see. Dawn steals the page and soaks it until the sticker comes off, all in an effort to understand what is normal for women, and how she may be different from that.
Dawn researches her teeth, learning about vagina dentata from mythology. Her small town is in the shadow of a nuclear power plant, suggesting she is possibly a genetic mutation, or maybe an evolutionary leap.
The double standard is shown to extend beyond diagrams of genitalia to men’s attitudes towards women. Nearly every man in the film (excepting only Dawn’s father) turns out to be secretly vile. Especially Dawn’s reprehensible brother, (creepily played by John Hensley of Nip / Tuck fame), who is horrible to his girlfriend and sexually obsessed with his step-sister.
This is no film for the squeamish as the penis amputation scenes are quite graphic. Many men will be crossing their legs while watching this film. Yet it was written and directed by a man, so no one can claim that it is a feminist diatribe against men. Rather, Mitchell Lichtenstein’s point seems to be that keeping people ignorant about sex and their bodies denies them the power to make informed decisions. But it also asks the question, would men treat women better if they knew women could fight back with deadly consequences to the man? All the men who are harmed by Dawn bring it on themselves through their own actions and their mistreatment of her. You end up cheering her own while being horrified at the things she has to go through.
Yet this can seem one note at times, as there are hardly any nice male characters in the film to balance out the all-men-are-rapists-in-waiting who mistreat women message. Teeth could perhaps have done with another male character, apart from Dawn’s father, to balance out the film.
The ending remains open as Dawn’s optimistic and virtuous outlook has been eroded over the course of the film. She has no choice but to leave her old life behind and possibly leave a trail of bodies in her wake.
Starring: Jess Weixler, John Hensley, Hale Appleman, Ashley Springer
Written By: Mitchell Lichtenstein
Directed By: Mitchell Lichtenstein
Playing out like an anti-Candy, Teeth stars Jess Weixler as Dawn, an abstinent teen, who is forced to come to terms with her sexuality when she discovers she is not like other girls.
Teeth opens with a Dawn and her brother Brad as young children playing in a paddling pool. Their parents have just married, making them step-brother and sister. Brad says he’ll show her his if she’ll show him hers. We don’t see what happens, but Brad comes away with a permanent scar on his index finger hinting at what is to come.
We then cut to several years later with Dawn now in high school. She preaches to groups of teens about the virtue of abstinence. You wear the abstinence ring on your finger until you can swap it for a gold marriage band. Things get complicated when Dawn meets Tobey (Hale Appleman), who is also part of the abstinence group. She believes she has found the perfect boy in Tobey; that he is The One because he believes in abstinence too and wants to wait until marriage before he has sex with Dawn - or so he says. Teenage hormones run strong and Dawn finds it hard to keep her abstinence promise while dreaming of marriage to Tobey.
Things go horribly wrong when Dawn goes swimming with Tobey, whose desire for sex gets the better of him, and in an unpleasant scene, forces himself on Dawn. But Dawn is not like other girls; her vagina has teeth, and instinctively, in reaction to Tobey’s violence, she amputates his member.
After this the film follows a similar course to Candy, as Dawn is subsequently preyed upon and manipulated by any number of men out to take advantage of her. At times it is quite harrowing to watch. But unlike Candy, Dawn fights back.
As she gradually comes to realise exactly how she is different to other women, Dawn also realises that she can consciously control her other set of teeth. Not every sexual encounter has to be deadly. The point is also made in the film that high school students in the sex-education class are allowed to see a full-page diagram of a penis, but the diagram of the female sexual organs is covered up by a giant sticker because it is deemed unfit for the students’ to see. Dawn steals the page and soaks it until the sticker comes off, all in an effort to understand what is normal for women, and how she may be different from that.
Dawn researches her teeth, learning about vagina dentata from mythology. Her small town is in the shadow of a nuclear power plant, suggesting she is possibly a genetic mutation, or maybe an evolutionary leap.
The double standard is shown to extend beyond diagrams of genitalia to men’s attitudes towards women. Nearly every man in the film (excepting only Dawn’s father) turns out to be secretly vile. Especially Dawn’s reprehensible brother, (creepily played by John Hensley of Nip / Tuck fame), who is horrible to his girlfriend and sexually obsessed with his step-sister.
This is no film for the squeamish as the penis amputation scenes are quite graphic. Many men will be crossing their legs while watching this film. Yet it was written and directed by a man, so no one can claim that it is a feminist diatribe against men. Rather, Mitchell Lichtenstein’s point seems to be that keeping people ignorant about sex and their bodies denies them the power to make informed decisions. But it also asks the question, would men treat women better if they knew women could fight back with deadly consequences to the man? All the men who are harmed by Dawn bring it on themselves through their own actions and their mistreatment of her. You end up cheering her own while being horrified at the things she has to go through.
Yet this can seem one note at times, as there are hardly any nice male characters in the film to balance out the all-men-are-rapists-in-waiting who mistreat women message. Teeth could perhaps have done with another male character, apart from Dawn’s father, to balance out the film.
The ending remains open as Dawn’s optimistic and virtuous outlook has been eroded over the course of the film. She has no choice but to leave her old life behind and possibly leave a trail of bodies in her wake.
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