DRAMA; 1hr 56min
STARRING: Summer Bishil, Aaron Eckhart
Mixed message: Bishil and Eckhart
Jasira (Bishil, the sultry embodiment of needy, manipulative naiveté) is in transition, shuttled from her sassy American mother (Maria Bello) to her conservative Houston-based Lebanese father (Peter Macdissi) for being too provocative with her mother’s boyfriend (Chris Messina). Navigating her first period and emerging sexuality, Jasira already shows the ripe, dusky prettiness of the woman she will become. The last thing she — or any 13-year-old — needs is a sexual dalliance with a decades-older married man (Eckhart). But that’s exactly what she misguidedly encourages, and gets.
Based on the 2005 novel by Alicia Erian, Towelhead ’s unsettling domain is the sterile confines of suburbia at the time of the first Gulf War, where perceived respectability is a papery veneer and neatly drawn boundaries exist to be crossed. Under director and screenwriter Alan Ball’s tonally erratic direction, its building unease and brittle, jarring humour make a queasy marriage. But the acting is uniformly assured (uncomfortably so at times) and the saving grace of the final minutes — as unexpected as they are affirming — bring a lilting and emotive note of hope.
