True-Blood.net Reviews Alan Ball’s “Towelhead”

I’m not a television or movie critic. I don’t know what they look for when they watch a program or a film. All I can do is convey my own musings while watching Alan Ball’s “Towelhead” last night at the Chicago screening.

I can tell you that this movie deals with very real situations that happen to very real people. Teenagers becoming curious about sex as early as twelve years old is real. Thirteen year old girls losing their virginity to boys who think that having sex makes them men is real. The fact that pedophiles exist in the world is also real. We just don’t like to look at that. We hate it when someone puts something that real in front of us to look at up close. It’s a horror.

The movie focuses on thirteen-year-old Jasira, who is facing more things in her young life than a newbie teen should have to, but often does. Her parents are divorced and she’s living with her mother at the start of the movie. Also living there is the mother’s boyfriend. When the boyfriend acts inappropriately towards Jasira, her mother sends her to stay with her father, laying all the blame for the boyfriend’s actions on Jasira.

Her father has absolutely no idea what to do with a daughter. He treats her with an utter lack of respect and almost seems to loathe her. Nothing she does is good enough for him. He’s also a racist in denial.

Then there’s Jasira’s own, personal issues. Although they are nothing out of the ordinary for a teenage girl, they are huge to her. And she has no guidance. No one to tell her what’s going on with her changing body, or how to deal with the emotions that change right along with her body. She’s alone, confused and clueless.

I couldn’t help but feel anger and disgust towards Jasira’s parents. They were both selfish, immature people who were so wound up in their own tiny worlds that there was no room for their daughter who needed them, especially at this time in her life.

What I was most afraid of seeing in Towelhead was the pedophile next door neighbor, played by Aaron Eckhart. I felt like I wanted to shut my eyes and not watch. But it wasn’t overdone. Alan Ball thought enough of his audience to know that we’d get what was happening without having to get real graphic about it. Oddly enough, the thought that kept running through my mind during that scene was “how on earth did Aaron Eckhart get through this?” From what Alan told us later in the evening, it was very difficult for him.

Jasira meets another neighbor, played by Toni Collette, who sort of takes her under her wing and tries to help her understand that she is a normal, teenage girl, thinking normal thoughts and feeling normal feelings. I think the confidence gained by her new found knowledge helps Jasira deal with her father, her boyfriend and bad neighbor later in the film.

This movie, although there are disturbing things going on at times, it presents itself in a very calm way. There’s already enough to jar the senses and Towelhead seems to know that. So the music is not loud and rolling, leading up to moments that really don’t need any help.

I kind of felt like this movie was talking to me about things that I don’t want to hear about, but need to, in a loving, gentle way. I can’t possibly explain this any better. You will just have to go and see for yourself. Step outside of your comfort zone for just a bit and go experience this movie. Don’t be afraid of it, Alan Ball is a magician and knows how to take care of you.

Stills from the movie can be found in our gallery, courtesy of Warner Independent Pictures.