Towelhead

Directed by Alan Ball

In indie American cinema’s recent tradition of quirky, vacuous back-patting (Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, etc.), Towelhead elevates the status quo semi-successfully. Many of its failures and successes follow from director Alan Ball’s HBO show Six Feet Under. That series about a family-run funeral home delved expertly into bodies and middle-class psychosis, rarely addressing its LA setting’s economic and racial rifts. Similarly, Towelhead – Ball’s feature debut adapted from Alicia Erian’s eponymous novel – mobilizes more issues than it can tackle intelligently.

During Gulf War I adolescent Jasira (Summer Bishil) and her Lebanese-American father (Peter Macdissi) butt heads, reacting to their Houston cul-de-sac’s suburban seediness. Imagine American Beauty blended with Paul Haggis’s Crash. Like the latter, Towelhead’s engagement with racism never transcends one-dimensional tokenism (economic inequality, meanwhile, seems non-existent in cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel’s magical realist suburban wonderland). Adults are one-dimensional here, social ills boiled down to knee-jerk behaviors: Jasira’s infantile mother (Maria Bello), Aaron Eckhart’s rapist reservist (he’s conservative and a sex offender, wow, don’t Republicans suck!?), and Toni Colette’s perpetually pregnant superwoman (well, okay, it’s always nice to see Colette, and the idea of her actually playing Wonderwoman is not unappealing).
For better or worse, this makes Towelhead’s intelligent and horny teens the fascinating core of the film, and the site of its greatest successes. Jasira’s sexual initiations, especially, provide an unflinching portrayal of childhood sexuality sadly absent from contemporary cinema. If it takes feigning topical interest in American race relations for Towelhead to address a more taboo topic with greater intelligence, the result is worthwhile despite its shortcomings.

A similar version of this review appears in The L Magazine, and can be read here.