Filmikaze!

By: Alan Ball (director, screenplay), Alicia Erian (novel)

Starring: Summer Bishil, Chris Messina, Maria Bello, Peter Macdissi, Aaron Eckhart, Carrie Preston, Toni Collette

A young Arab-American girl struggles with her sexual obsession, a bigoted Army reservist and her strict father during the Gulf War.

Hey hey, I made it a whole month! Anyway, onto the review.

Towelhead is the coming-of-age story of thirteen-year-old Jasira, and is set principally in Houston, Texas during the First Gulf War. From the start, we get the impression that life has always been pretty dubious for Jasira, who begins the story in New York but is then sent to live with her Lebanese father in Texas after she’s pressured into some uber-creepy activity with her mother’s skeevy boyfriend. While in Texas, Jasira’s life is pretty much a parade of abuse: her strict father abuses her mentally, emotionally and eventually physically; her adult neighbor sexually assaults her twice; her boyfriend manipulates her into sexual acts. All of this transpires with the backdrop of a young woman struggling to discover her sexuality and personal identity.

I have be up front: mostly, this film just made me hate men. There were certain scenes that were extremely discomfiting not so much because this poor girl was being fucked up by so many men in so many ways (Although that certainly factors in), but because as a woman, I can identify with and found realism in the horrible, manipulative ways the men we being depicted. I don’t want to make this into some sort of man-bashing activity, but the fact is that men can and often are awful to women, sometimes without even being aware they’re doing it, and that aspect of the film struck a chord.

That said, the film falls short of the heartwrenching, tender portrait it aims for. The acting was all very good, but overall the film feels a bit top-heavy, like it’s letting its politics get ahead of its storytelling. There’s a curious irony to the fact that the movie sets itself up as a political morality play and then proceeds to paint a cliched picture of Jasira’s Middle Eastern father and establish a white couple as her saviors. The end was trite, and felt at odds with everything that came before, like Alan Ball was trying to tie everything up as quickly as he could. The film’s biggest failing is that there’s no real consequences for any of Jasira’s abusers, in the end; everyone is permitted redemption except perhaps Jasira herself, whose earnest declaration that she wants to continue having sex with her boyfriend falls flat in light of how little she previously enjoyed it, and that she was always manipulated into it. It makes no sense and is actually pretty damned insulting.