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  Towelhead

Starring: Summer Bishil, Peter Macdissi, Aaron Eckhart, Maria Bello

Directed by: Alan Ball

Produced by: Ted Hope, Alan Ball

Written by: Alan Ball

Distributor: Warner Independent Pictures

 

     Alan Ball’s Towelhead is—often in the same scene—the most realistic and unrealistic deconstruction of suburbia you’ve ever seen. Much like American Beauty, the Best Picture-winner that Ball wrote for director Sam Mendes almost ten years ago, the movie takes more than a few liberties in crafting a setting of suburban hell to express nonetheless-authentic themes about the dark emotions lurking behind those perfectly-trimmed lawns and symmetrical-lines of tract homes. But Towelhead, while not as intellectually-stimulating an exercise as American Beauty, boasts a better balance of realism and embellishment because it isn’t nearly as self-important. Unlike Kevin Spacey’s pot-smoking suburban victim Lester Burnham, Towelhead protagonist Jasira Maroun (Summer Bishil) is an entirely sympathetic individual. Yes, Jasira is confused and likes to act out—such is the consequence of her chaotic upbringing—but she acts as the perfect relatable agent to get viewers thinking about the deeper narrative themes that Ball explores.

 

     Jasira is an adolescent girl whose home-life is, put simply, a living hell. Early on in Towelhead, she’s sent to live with her emotionally-unstable Lebonese father, Rifat (Peter Macdissi), in Texas because her American mother (Maria Bello) can’t handle her “unladylike” qualities. Things don’t go well: Jasira becomes the victim of her pedophile next-door neighbor, Travis Vuoso (Aaron Eckhart); has a sexual relationship with a black boy (Eugene Jones) at school, perhaps only to make her racist father angry; and seeks shelter with a mysterious couple who lives down the block (Toni Collette and Matt Letscher). As contrived as Ball’s plot seems, it works because Jasira is so profoundly mentally-abused by her parents and her unstable surroundings that the horror she attracts feels probable. Not to mention, when things get a little farfetched, Ball interjects with often wickedly funny dark comedy that breaks down the suburban stereotypes involved. And the acting is phenomenal, too, with Bishil providing a powerhouse of a lead performance as Jasira, Macdissi perfectly balancing the evil of Rifat with the character’s own forgivable psychological-problems, and Eckhart offering an eerily accurate portrayal of a sexual-predator. Even if Ball’s ideas aren’t as substantive or original as they were in 1999 when American Beauty was released, Towelhead’s abundant good qualities nonetheless allow the film to function as a serviceable vehicle for the filmmaker to revisit them.

 

-Danny Baldwin, Bucket Reviews

Review Published on: 9.12.2008

Screened on: 9.3.2008 at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, CA.

 

Towelhead is rated R and runs 116 minutes.


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