Teethe (Sundance Film Review)

It’s hard to describe how bad this film was. The concept is great: a teenage girl, who runs a purity campaign, discovers that she has teethe in her vagina and begins to enjoy the power that comes with such a gift/curse. In a male dominated culture, it is easy to see the appeal of this film. It is summed up in the opening credits. The credits are a digital image of eggs and sperm swimming around. At key moments the music becomes very intense and several sperm attack one egg. This continually happens until the end the credits when one egg eats three of the sperm. Terms like “nail,” “penetrate,” and “prick” all reference the dominance of male masculinity. This rhetoric subtly works to keep women in subordinate roles. Thus, a film like Teethe becomes a powerful statement against male dominion over sex. It has the potential to reveal the power of women to “eat” men who do not see their sexual partner as an equal.
Alas, the end result was a very poor film. The acting was terrible. The music was overly dramatic. The plotline was weak. The character development was stereotypical at best. The only thing this film could do was make an audience laugh and convulse in the same breath. Three men were castrated and a gynecologist lost four fingers. Teethe was a film that did not know what it wanted to be, and the end result was mediocrity with a double-shot of shock value. Many women after the film laughed about how it redefines the term “chick-flick.” Unfortunately, this remains more true than most people will realize. This film is not a film about “girl-power.” It is a film that exploits girl, thus allowing women to enter the same game that men have been a part of for years. Thus, the same system this film may claim to go up against is actually the same system it is a part of. Thus, Teethe is just a like a “chick-flick” because it allows women to remain in their subordinate roles still playing the same game their supposed male rival is playing.