'Towelhead': You Might Want to Avert Your Eyes

Alan Ball Offers a Too-Frank Look at A Young Girl's Sexual Awakening

"Towelhead" is Alan Ball's smart but visually troubling adaptation of Alicia Erian's 2005 novel of the same name, which portrays a young Lebanese American girl becoming sexually aware in a bland Houston suburb against the backdrop of the Persian Gulf War. Ball won an Oscar in 2000 for his "American Beauty" screenplay, which also explored suburban sexual and familial dysfunction, and here he returns to some of the same themes, this time as writer and director.

The result is often clever, original and possessed of an excellent cast. Ball's script catches some of the novel's pop, often word for word. But much of the film is off-key, the comic timing starts to miss a beat, and there's camera work that teeters on the edge of voyeurism. It's a tough gig, making the bloody rape of a 13-year-old coexist with comedy. After a while, it starts feeling just plain creepy.

The film stays pretty faithful to the narrative trajectory of the book. Jasira (newcomer Summer Bishil, in a nice turn) is an alienated young Arab American girl growing up with a world of questions and not much in the way of guidance from her divorced parents. When the story opens, she's living with her mom, whose boyfriend likes to see Jasira in her undies, so he can better shave her just-developing body hair. Mom blames her for this twisted little escapade, and sends the daughter, sobbing, off to Houston to live with her Lebanese American dad.

This is not much of an improvement. Dad is Rifat Maroun (Peter Macdissi), a NASA engineer so tightly wound he wears a tie around the house. A Christian from East Beirut, he's obsessed, by turns, with the start of the war in Iraq, his daughter's developing body and his Greek girlfriend. One minute he's smacking Jasira for the indecency of wearing shorts and a tank top to breakfast; the next he's leaving her alone in the evenings so he can frolic with his sweetie.

Jasira is an outsider at school, lost in the burbs, apparently invisible as an actual person. The school janitor thinks she's Hispanic; when the white kids find out she's half Lebanese, they start calling her "Towelhead," a crude slur for Arabs.

Her one connection to life itself seems to be her developing sexuality. Everywhere she looks, she sees half-naked women: boobs on the television, booty on taxi placards. When she babysits the neighbor's bratty 11-year-old son, Zack (Chase Ellison), they pass the time by poring over the dad's girlie mags. She fantasizes about the women she sees, making her mouth into that little open "o," to show how arousing all this is. Zack's dad (Aaron Eckhart, fresh from "The Dark Knight") is aroused when he catches them at this. He's a bigoted Army reservist, packing to go off to the war, but not before he preys on his own Lebanese Lolita.

Meanwhile, Jasira instantly falls for Thomas (Eugene Jones), the first boy who is even vaguely polite. He's black -- you can just guess what Jasira's daddy is going to think about that -- and solely focused on having sex with her. Fortunately, there's one coherent adult in the neighborhood, the very pregnant Melina (Toni Collette).

Everyone on screen is marvelous, particularly Macdissi, who keeps a demanding, narcissistic, bigoted man somehow likable. I wish I could tell you how he did it. Eckhart is both icky and sincere as the child molester next door, and Collette ("Little Miss Sunshine," "The Sixth Sense") is always fun to watch. You can also listen up for some not-so-subtle cues on the soundtrack; the background music includes bits like "She Drives Me Crazy," and "I'm No Angel."

The main problem here is one of visualization. Ball struggles with how to film the graphic descriptions in the book, and errs on the side of gratuitousness. We get further dissonance from eyeing Jasira herself. Bishil was 18 when the movie was filmed, and she looks it. It doesn't really register that she's supposed to be 13 until someone mentions it.

The overall effect is jarring, which might be the best single word for this dark little foray into teen sex in the suburbs.

Towelhead (124 minutes, at Landmark E Street Cinema) is rated R for strong, disturbing sexual content and abuse involving a young teen, and for language.