Swiss-born writer-director Sophie Bösch makes her feature debut with Milk Teeth, a modern-day twist on fairy-tale tropes with some timely points to make about gender politics, immigration panic and the kindness of strangers. Adapted from Helen Bukowski’s 2019 novel, this female-driven German-language suspense drama combines keen intelligence, strong performances and solid technical specs. But it falls flat as a thriller, which will likely limit its prospects to art-house circles instead of potentially broader genre-fan audiences. It world premieres as part of Rotterdam’s Big Screen Competition this week, closely followed by a Swedish launch at Gothenburg film festival next week.
Milk Teeth takes place in an isolated woodland community, somewhere in central Europe, time and location purposely vague. There are ramshackle farmhouses and relatively modern cars here, but scant evidence of phones, computers or other contemporary technology. Cut off from the wider world following an unspecified apocalyptic event, this self-contained community grows its own food, raises its own livestock and treats rare sightings of outsiders with deep suspicion. Laws are made by the village elders, and sometimes enforced with violence. Even so, we are not in some simplistic movie dystopia here, more like an allegorical mirror image of 21st century European society. Warm communal bonds and idyllic lakeside landscapes co-exist alongside stifling patriarchal rules and an undercurrent of latent menace.
A young woman renowned for her hunting skills, Skalde (Mathilde Bundschuh) is a former outsider who has earned respect and acceptance. But she takes a big risk by harbouring a pre-teen orphan, Meisis (Viola Hinz), after discovering her alone in the forest. “I’m not a girl, I’m a wolf,” the moon-faced foundling tells Skalde. A harmless piece of imaginative role-play, perhaps, but dangerously ambivalent words to utter in this tight-knit community, where ancient folkloric suspicions about witches, curses and wolf children have resurfaced with a vengeance, curdling into gun-toting survivalist paranoia.
Even Skalde’s own mother Edith (Susanne Wolff) goes along with this brutal, dehumanising herd logic at first: “Throw it in a sack with some rocks and cast it in the river,” she says of Meisis. Over time she comes to accept the child, but her neighbours remain universally hostile. Moved by protective, maternal empathy, Skalde makes an uneasy pact with them to wait for the girl’s milk teeth to come through, generally accepted proof that she is human and not a wolf in disguise. Even so, tense currents still ripple through the community, fuelling family schism and violent outbursts.
Kowalski’s source novel painted a much more detailed picture of desperate humans struggling with the horrors of ecological catastrophe. By contrast, Bösch keeps viewers guessing about the dramatic back story. Despite glancing references to burning fields and mass extinction events, it is never entirely clear whether the action takes place in a genuinely post-apocalyptic outpost or some kind of cult-like commune using fear of the outside world to maintain control over its members. The sunny woodland setting is certainly more picturesque camping trip than end-of-times hellscape.
In its favour, Milk Teeth features generally strong lead performances, especially the perpetually haunted-looking Bundschuh and impressively nuanced screen novice Hinz, plus plenty of handsome forest tableaux courtesy of cinematographer Aleksandra Medianikova. But the film’s core problem is its low-energy indie-drama feel, a too-timid tone for a suspense-driven thriller. The busy narrative features missing children, mysterious animal slaughter, a bloody traffic accident, and what appears to be a suicide, but Bösch underplays all these events, inexplicably keeping them off-screen and unexamined. Despite a steady throb of creeping dread, her tastefully muted storytelling never delivers any of the killer reveals or major ruptures it seems to promise.
As an elevated genre exercise riffing on familiar werewolf folklore, Milk Teeth lacks bite. As a feminist allegory using fairy-tale archetypes to critique patriarchal power structures, it lacks clarity. In fairness, this solidly crafted debut is swimming with potentially rich subtext, and confirms Bösch has already mastered the basics as a first-time director. But hopefully her next film will punch a little harder, fly a little higher and make more daring choices.
Director: Sophia Bösch
Screenwriters: Sophia Bösch, Roman Gielke, from the novel by Helene Kowalski
Cast: Mathilde Bundschuh, Susanne Wolff, Ulrich Matthes, Viola Hinz, Andreas Lust
Cinematography: Aleksandra Medianikova
Editing: Andrea Muñoz
Producer: Milena Klemke
Production company: Weydemann Bros GmbH (Germany)
World sales: LevelK, Denmark
Venue: Rotterdam Fim Festival (Big Screen Competition)
In German
97 minutes
