DVD REVIEW: Towelhead

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Towelhead
Directed by Alan Ball
(Warner Home Video)

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Directed and written by the writer who penned American Beauty, this intense drama ranks as one of the more difficult films I’ve watched in the past few years.

Not that the project was painfully miscast or uninteresting, just the opposite, but the subject matter seems intended to raise issues that will make the majority of viewers very uncomfortable. Some might argue that this should be what a good film is supposed to do: to get an audience out of their comfort zone. Towelhead achieves that handily and the story, though clocking in at two hours, did have a way of sticking in my mind for days afterwards.

Centering around the half Lebanese Jazira, a thirteen year old attempting to discover an inkling of her identity while her body matures faster than her mind or emotions, the narrative raises issues of what life is like to be an Arab-American female growing up in the U.S. The story follows the young girl as she’s kicked out of her Mother’s house and her move to early 1990s Texas, to live with her traditional minded Lebanese father. Once in Texas, Jazira becomes entwined with the all-American father of the boy she baby-sits, a relationship that quickly becomes inappropriate and finally sexual. The remainder of this dramatic film dappled with comedy portrays the story of how this young girl loses her girlhood innocence.

The film should not be considered so one sided and is very multi-layered. Well represented by Summer Bishil, Jazira internalizes the cultural role of what it means to be a sexual object of male desire. Indeed, Jazira seems almost participatory in fulfilling the fantasies of males in her life. The film quickly pushes the girl’s ethnicity to the side in favor of exploring these much deeper issues of sexuality.

Obviously, this is a film for mature audiences and many scenes are difficult to watch. In the end though, this film does address an issue often swept under the rug: the hypersexualization of increasingly younger adolescent females and their construction of self-image through the view of male desire.

Kenneth Joachim

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