{"id":1240,"date":"2011-07-07T10:30:16","date_gmt":"2011-07-07T14:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/wpblog\/?p=1240"},"modified":"2012-07-15T19:59:00","modified_gmt":"2012-07-15T23:59:00","slug":"teeth-a-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/teeth-a-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"“Teeth”: a movie review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary: <\/strong>Dawn (Jess Weixler) is a young, Christian girl obsessed with abstinence who speaks for a youth-based purity group. On one hand, she is child-like and innocent, while, on the other, she is condescending and tense due to her \u201csacred vow.\u201d Yet, despite her feelings of constraint, she clings to her purity ring in order to get through her troubled home life, where her mother is bedridden by cancer and her step-brother (John Hensley) constantly smokes weed, clashes with their parents, and has sex with his latest girlfriend. When Dawn meets a young boy named Tobey (Hale Appleman), she falls head-over-heels in love due to his kindness, shy nature, and shared belief in chastity, but, at the same time, must struggle with the emerging sexual desires she feels towards him. Riddled by guilt and confusion, she has several encounters with Tobey that lead her to a gruesome and horrifying discovery: she suffers from a legendary condition called\u00a0vagina dentata<\/em>, or, \u201cvaginal teeth\u201d that turn her into a literal\u00a0femme fatale.<\/em><\/p>\n

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John Hensley bites off more than he can chew in Lichtenstein's "Teeth."<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Review:<\/strong> First off, I\u2019m going to start by warning that people who are squeamish when it comes to violence and\/or sex should steer clear of\u00a0Teeth<\/em>, because, while the nuclear power plants that constantly appear in the background suggest a cause for Dawn\u2019s deformity, this story is\u00a0not <\/em>a satire on science \u2014 it\u2019s a coming-of-age story of sexual discovery and self-acceptance. Dawn, especially in the beginning, is often a dislikeable character due to her holier-than-thou attitude and obsessive nature (she won\u2019t even watch a PG-13 film), but, following the cruelty she faces and her subsequent discovery of her \u201cadaptation,\u201d I truly feel empathy for her. She\u2019s, honestly, just a little girl inside of a teenager\u2019s body, despairing over her mother\u2019s illness and the sexual abuse that is suddenly thrust upon her. Following her violent discovery, Dawn desperately seeks answers, as well as comfort in others, who, for the most part, only treat her with cruel detachment. Growing up and discovering one\u2019s sexuality is very difficulty for everyone, and\u00a0Teeth<\/em> reminds us that, in a world where there\u2019s no person to guide you, it can become a miserable thing. A toothed vagina is a gut-wrenching concept that causes us to recoil and is meant to inspire in us the same level of disgust that Dawn feels towards regular sexuality \u2014 it\u2019s not merely impure, it\u2019s\u00a0evil<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Jess Weixler\u2019s performance is incredibly convincing: I begin to share Dawn\u2019s fears, and she truly comes across as a young woman who is slowly descending into sexual deviancy and violence as a means of escape. John Hensley also delivers an impressive performance as Dawn\u2019s twisted step-brother, swearing up a storm and verbally abusing his girlfriend, and, as repulsive as it may be, he plays a man who\u2019s obsessed with his too-young sister quite well. Also, Hale Appleman and Ashley Springer both fair well in their pushy, sexually-repressed roles. The cinematography is fairly striking and the editing appropriately timed, but the soundtrack is really just\u2026 odd and often feels out of place.<\/p>\n

Overall,\u00a0Teeth<\/em> is a film of sexual fear and discovery, empty human relationships and twisted legends, and, while I wish I could say it portrayed its message subtly, I can\u2019t: you see the results of her toothed vagina\u2019s wrath\u00a0several<\/em> times. With that said, it\u2019s convincing and emotionally involving, and, while foul, is successful in the message that it wishes to convey: while being obsessively abstinent leads to emotional turmoil and threatening naivity, being openly sexual can be even more dangerous and harmful. Even though this film left a bad taste in my mouth and a fair share of strange images in my mind, it was thought-provoking and probably one of the best satires I\u2019ve watched in a while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: Dawn (Jess Weixler) is a young, Christian girl obsessed with abstinence who speaks for a youth-based purity group. On one hand, she is child-like and innocent, while, on the other, she is condescending and tense due to her \u201csacred vow.\u201d Yet, despite her feelings of constraint, she clings to her purity ring in order […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":1244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,220],"tags":[175,174,172,177,170,171,169,176,168,173],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1240"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3114,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1240\/revisions\/3114"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}