Towelhead

Something that always delights me is to run across a sleeper film, something you’ve never heard of which turns out to be very interesting or very good. “The Visitor” was such a film, which was a sweet, unexpected surprise. The movie “Towelhead” is another such sleeper. My main reason to pick it up was Aaron Eckhardt was in it and he’s an actor I like. When I got the DVD home I discovered the film was the product of the imagination of Alan Ball, the director behind the Oscar-winning film, “American Beauty,” and the creative genius behind HBO’s “Six Feet Under,” my favorite all-time serial comedy/drama. So my excitement grew as I put the DVD on my player.
“Towelhead” did not disappoint. The film examines two aspects of American suburbs, racism among the various kinds of people who live there, and as a secondary theme, adult sex with a minor, or, if you will, the Polanski syndrome. Peter Macdisi, who played the egomaniacal art teacher in “Six Feet Under,” is Rifat Maroun, a divorced Lebanese father whose 13 year old daughter comes to live with him in the suburbs somewhere in Texas in 1991, during the first Gulf War. Moroun has a good job at a good salary, and he has a girl friend he sleeps with regularly. However, his attitude toward his daughter, Jashira (Summer Bishil) is medieval, puritanical, and abusive. He is in short a lousy father and very bigoted as she finds out later in the story. Jashira looks much older than 13 and is sexually precocious and too curious for her own good. When she and her father meet the neighbors, the Vuosos, the husband, Travis (Eckhardt), a redneck truck driver, is instantly turned on to her. He becomes enflamed over her Lolita-like tendencies and charms. And there is no question she is a gorgeous young lady, with a lovely face and a body to make men of all ages take notice. She also has problems at school with kids who make fun of her odd name and unusual looks; but one boy, Thomas (Eugene Jones), an African American, has his sights set on her right away. You wonder who will score with her first.
It’s Travis. He doesn’t have intercourse with her but he breaks her hymen with erotic foreplay. Meanwhile, Travis’ son, Zach, who Jashira has been babysitting, calls her a “towelhead” and “sand nigger,” which ends the relationship between the two families. Thomas makes a unique play for her sexual interest by offering to shave her pubic hair, which he does without making any advances. When her father finds out she is hanging out with an African American teenager he displays a rank prejudice toward Thomas; but they continue to see each other and to start to engage in intercourse, which she enjoys. She knows she is playing a dangerous game but she can’t stop herself. A neighbor lady (Toni Colette) tries to protect Jashira from Travis, but he pulls a fast one to get next to her. He shows up one night, telling her he is leaving for Iraq at 4 AM, and she feels sorry for him, so she does a strip tease for him and permits him to make love to her. She sees him in the morning going to work as usual and she knows he has lied to her.
At a dinner party the following night at the neighbor lady’s house there is a blow up regarding all the deception going on. The father realizes his daughter has been screwing the black boy and Jashira blurts out that Travis had sex with her the night before and had lied about leaving for the war. The upshot of all this truth-telling is Travis is arrested and Jashira and her father come to a reconciliation of sorts. End of story.
It is the performance of young Summer Bishil that propels the drama and the actor who elevates the movie beyond ordinariness. She is, by the way, older than 13. Eckhardt and Jones provide a nice contrast as lovers—one young and the other much older. Eckhardt is oily but sensitive in his fashion. Thomas is more experienced than Jashira and more honest and straight-forward than Travis; but he remains a young man in attitude, and therefore, much more compatible. Peter Macdisi is easy to hate, as he is such a hypocrite and his parenting skill are that of a Neanderthal. In conclusion, Alan Ball did a great job dealing with his two topics and having his actors handle things so discreetly with touchy material. It made for powerful drama.