‘Towelhead’: Provocative, satirical look at sexuality and suburbia

The first provocation of “Towelhead” is putting an ethnic slur in the title. From there, writer-director Alan Ball really lets fly.

“Towelhead,” based on a novel of the same name by Alicia Erian, is an impolite affair. Ball, who wrote “American Beauty” and created the TV series “Six Feet Under,” seems to have no boundaries when it comes to raking up the most sensitive issues — especially where sex is concerned.

The time is 1991, during the first Gulf War. Our central character is Jasira, a 13-year-old mixed-race girl who gets shipped by her mother (Maria Bello) to stay with her strict Lebanese father (Peter Macdissi) in a Houston suburb. Incidentally, watching this film will be much easier if you know that Summer Bishil, the young-looking actress who plays Jasira, was almost 20 years old when she shot the picture.

Jasira, you see, is acting out various anxieties by exploring her sexuality — with porno magazines, with a boy at school, and possibly with the all-American pedophile (Aaron Eckhart) who lives next door.

The ideas in this film, and its satiric approach, will likely not create a buzz. Which is too bad. Ball’s take isn’t terribly sophisticated, but he makes interesting things happen by mashing together outrageous situations and people.

What will get attention are the sex scenes (at least one of them a statutory rape) involving an adolescent, and Ball’s reluctance to cut discreetly away from that. It’s a fine line between brutal honesty and outright titillation, and Ball doesn’t have the control to tell one from the other, I suspect.

We should mention that the film is funny, in an uncomfortable way — and “funny in an uncomfortable way” is usually a sign that something worthwhile is going on in a movie.

Ball’s approach is broad, and so is most of the acting, including Toni Collette as a neighbor. A standout is Lebanese-born Peter Macdissi, who has an unusual vocal style and a laser-beam focus on his rigid character.

“Towelhead” received some curiously savage reviews from East Coast critics, many of whom were offended by the film’s criticism of suburban life. It’s an odd point — American literature of the 1950s was far more scathing on the subject of suburbia — but the film is, after all, satire. The broad brush comes with the territory.