Smartly adapted from the 2005 novel by Alicia Erian, Towelhead, Alan Ball's brutally honest and edgily funny story centers on Jasira (sensational Summer Bishil, 20), whose personal calculus is harder to solve even than multi-variable algebra.
Ball, the creator of Six Feet Under and screenwriter of American Beauty, dares us to look at this unconscious beauty, whose inky tendrils frame her almond eyes and ripe-plum lips, without projecting our own fantasies and fears. The result is a movie about the many forms of social and sexual abuse that does not make the abusee a victim but victor.
Then, he reverses angle and shows us how the world looks through her confused eyes, a rapidly shifting universe where every given is peremptorily taken away. One night, she's the subject of parental love, next morning an object of inappropriate lust. Seeking the adult tenderness withheld by her nervous parents, Jasira confuses sex for emotional intimacy.
Not since Splendor in the Grass has there been such a candid and sympathetic account of the mixed messages, double-standards, giddy highs and hormonal free falls experienced by teenage girls. For Jasira, every day is her own personal Tower of Terror ride, an elevator trip to the penthouse of possible pleasure, one that abruptly plunges to the sub-basement of shame.
When Mom's live-in beau volunteers to give Jasira a bikini wax, Mother (Maria Bello) immediately dispatches Jasira to Houston to the care of her courtly father.
A gentleman of Old World values, Rifat (Peter Macdissi) nonetheless enjoys New World prerogatives. Still, he is so scandalized when his budding daughter comes to the breakfast table in short-shorts that he belts her.
