Review of Towelhead (2008) by Jim H — 03 Nov 2012
A young Arab-American girl lives with her insensitive, racist father and grows to sexual awakening after she's raped by a neighbor.
This is the feel-good movie of the year if your idea of a great date movie is Bastard out of Carolina. At every plot turn, director and co-writer Alan Ball's film gets more and more disturbing. It packs in themes of sexual abuse and growing sexual maturity with themes of racism and parenthood. And while Toni Collette's character is supposed to be the liberal moral center of the film, most of the characters are so remarkably distasteful that no matter how hard Ball tries to make us see them as real, flawed people, the film comes off as disturbing for disturbing's sake. I suppose the film tries to present the American Dream as a flawed notion tainted by racism, leaving children as its most vulnerable victims, but instead the film merely amounts to a collection of atrocities.
The performances are all good. I haven't seen Aaron Eckhart play not-Aaron-Eckhart until this film, and Summer Bishil gives a wise-beyond-her-years portrayal of Jasira, the victim of the film's worst events.
Overall, this is a great film if you want to hate everything for a while.
This review of Towelhead (2008) was written by Jim H on 03 Nov 2012.
Towelhead has generally received positive reviews.
Was this review helpful?
