Release Date: September 19, 2008 or later or before Studio: Warner Independent MPAA Rating: R Genre: Drama Director: Alan Ball Writers: Alan Ball, Alicia Erian Cast: Summer Bishil, Aaron Eckhardt, Peter Macdissi ,Toni Collete, Maria Bello,Lynn Collins,Eugene Jones III Synopsis: TOWELHEAD, based on Alicia Erian's critically acclaimed novel, is the coming-of-age story of Jasira Maroun , a half Lebanese thirteen-year-old girl in Houston, Texas during the time of the first Gulf War under the first president George Bush, her encounters with racism, ignorance and the deeper horrors of suburban America. The Review: This review is rated A for Adult themes and Acid-washed jeans.
You’ve been warned.
Jasira (Summer Bishil) begins her journey and the film in Syracuse, NY , living with her mother Gail (Maria Bello) and Barry, the deadbeat boyfriend.
When Gail learns that Barry helped her (only by providing razors and shaving cream ) shave her pubic hair and accompanying area, Gail kicks her daughter out because, by shaving down there, Jasira was going against her mother’s wishes !
She sends her to live with her father.
“If you are going to learn how a man thinks, you have to live with a man,” she says.
No, Gail isn’t that smart.
Jasira flies to Houston, meets up with her Lebanese father and, with the first words out of his mouth, he chastises her for the plane being late.
Rifat lives in the suburbs in a shiny brand-new home with a brand new car.
I guess NASA pays more than I thought.
This guy is a piece of work in a sharp double-breasted suit. As Ferris Bueller would say “Pardon my French, but …he’s…so tight that if you stuck a lump of coal up his ass in two weeks you'd have a diamond.”
He’s abusive,self-centered,paranoid and completely unaware of how to raise a daughter.
Rifat strikes Jasira at the dinner table and she runs to her room. Rifat later come to her door and kindly tells his sobbing daughter that it's okay, he forgives her.
When she gets her first period, he forbids her from getting the kind of tampons that she really needs.
I think I could count the number of times he actually acts like a caring human being on one hand in TOWELH______.
Early on, Rifat and Jasira are visited by their very blonde, very bland neighbors, the Vuosos: Travis, Evelyn and Zack.
Travis is an Army Reservist—I don’t remember what his day job is, Evelyn is a peppy bigot--again, my apologies, I’ve forgotten her occupation and Zack is a sullen fifth grader.
The Vuosos have smiles that are too big and are trying way too hard to be nice. It’s easy to read the fear and contempt behind their eyes and to hear the condescending tones beneath their forced good cheer.
They hire Jasira to be their son’s babysitter.
J accepts and one day she catches Zack reading, err—looking at one of his father’s porno magazines.
I found this bit particularly amusing because, just the night before , I had been talking to Ben Schwartz, the owner of Empire’s Comics Vault, discussing the uselessness of trying to hide, as a parent, porn or anything else that don’t want your kids to see, from your kids.
I said then: “If you hide it, they’ll find it, so don’t even try.”
J is disgusted, then intrigued by the magazines. She picks one up and, in a dazzeling fantasy sequence with plenty of bare boobs, is intrigued and then turned on--before she, or the audience, knows it, she’s rubbed her legs together, and brought herself to orgasm.
“Why were you squirming around like that ? “ asks Zack.
“I was just trying to get comfortable,” she replies.
Of course, later, Travis catches Zack and Jasira at “The Forbidden Closet of Mystery” reading—sorry again, looking at his skin mags.
He sends Zack to his room, and it’s here, as he scolds J, you can tell something is very, very wrong with this guy.
Travis is portrayed by Aaron Eckhardt and he was the only reason I was interested in seeing this film.
Earlier this summer, Eckhardt was the unsung hero/villain of THE DARK KNIGHT.
Unfortuntely, his stalwart performance as Harvey Dent and his tortured bifurcated alter-ego Two-Face was eclipsed by the late, great Heath Ledger’s Joker.
Travis is a good-old-boy suburban Dad and his performance--gotta be the accent and the air of “innocent” befuddlement, reminded me of another Texan—George W. Bush.
Some of this may seem familiar, like Ball’s last big hit--the black comedy AMERICAN BEAUTY and Travis Vuoso may remind you of Kevin Spacey’s Lester Burnham in that film, but think again.
Yes, Lester in AMERICAN BEAUTY was lusting after the teenaged Angela Chase (my Myspace buddy Mena Suvari ), but he wasn’t a predator with a slow smile and a smooth line of palaver like Travis here-he was a middle-aged doof.
I can still remember laughing over this exchange in AMERICAN BEAUTY:
Lester: So what are you girls doing now ?
Angela: We're going out for pizza.
Lester:Really ? Do you need a ride ? We can give you a ride. I have a car. You want to come with us ?
And so on.
Is Lester letting his pant do the thinking? Sure.
But, as viewers will remember, when it got right to it-Lester couldn’t be a molester.
He couldn’t deflower Angela because she was too perfect-an American Beauty.
But the scenes with Travis get darker and the content becomes more disturbing as the film goes on. I don’t even want to write about it, but I was squirming here more than when I saw HARD CANDY. In fact, HARD CANDY, even with its scenes of near castration was easier to watch and actually more fun, than most of TOWELH_____.
Let’s talk about something else.
The film explores racism and ignorance in its myriad forms.
Zack, the sullen ten-year-old, calls Jasira “towel____” , “cameljockey” and worse.
When Jasira’s father allows her to eat at a friend’s house for dinner, but later sees that the friend in question, Thomas, is black, he’s furious and tells her she can’t see him.
But, when she asks if a girlfriend can stay over , and mentions she is white-he says it doesn’t matter for girls-“I don’t want you to think I’m racist.”
And Travis objects to Jasira seeing Thomas,saying, like her father, that it will ruin her reputation.
When Jasira tells Thomas, tears running down her face, that she can’t see him anymore because she will be acting against the will of her parents, he correctly points out that: “If you do what a racist says;that makes you a racist”.
J’s life at school is also rough.
Her eighth grade schoolmates are uniformly despicable in their treatment.
There’s a painful but funny scene when the school’s janitor--a hispanic woman--helps Jasira through her first period. Since she presumes Jasira is hispanic too, the janitor is shown seen to be upset, thinking that J’s parents haven’t taught her Spanish.
There were a few more painfully funny moments in Jasira’s French class.
In them , I was reminded of Peggy Hill teaching substitute Spanish in Fox television’s “King of the Hill” as the teacher led her class en francais , her leaden Texas twang leveled anything remotely like a French accent.
To be fair,once in Ireland , I heard a local newscaster describe a conflict in Nicaragua -and you ain’t heard nothing until you’ve heard the word “Nicaragua” said in a heavy Belfast brogue.
TOWELH____ takes place a mythical version of Houston, Texas where Rifat can wear his crisp suits throughout the day and Jasira easily wears those cute pastel sweaters of the late 80’s and early 90’s with her acid-washed levi skirts.
I’m not doubting the authenticity of the costume design here, it’s just that I was in Houston working on RoboCop 2 in September and October of 1989 and it was really hot and unbearably humid. I was in shorts and a T-shirt and I was dying.
I can still remember Nancy Allen looking at me with pity as I literally was dripping sweat on the floor.
For those of you that missed out on the beauty that was acid-washed jeans back then, take heart. My lovely wife found a few pair on sale at our nearby Target. Maybe you could wear them to the theatre when you go see TOWELH_____.
Well, maybe not.
Again, director Ball has surrounded himself with another excellent ensemble cast.
Newcomer Summer Bishil turns in a very fine, very understated performance as Jasira.
Imdb.com says this is her first film appearance following single guest shots on “Days of our Lives” and “Hannah Montana”. It’s not Ms. Bishil’s fault, but Jasira’s appearance fluctuates a few times in the film. At least from a legal and ethical standpoint she was 18 when she made TOWELH_____.
Peter Macdissi must have had a lot of fun playing the prickly Rifat Maroun.
He’s so effective you don’t love to hate him—you simply hate him.
I was especially taken by Lynn Collins as Rifat’s Greek girlfriend Thena. She is just too lovely and FilmGeekz will be interested to learn she will be mutant Silver Fox in the upcoming WOLVERINE movie
Toni Collete is very sweet as Melina Hines, Jasira’s earthy and pregnant other neighbor, but despite how important her character becomes for Jasira, I found her character to be derivative.
It seems there is always that one “perfect” person that shows up in films like these, to rescue the main character from the cruel, cruel world. It was Claire (Renee Zellweger) in WHITE OLEANDERS and here it’s Melina.
Melina’s husband Gil (Matt Letscher) is, at first glance, an ineffectual hippie, he stands up against Rifat and knows exactly how to put him in his place.
Third-billed but really good, Maria Bello is in TOWELH_____ very briefly as Jasira’s mother/Rifat’s ex-wife Gail . Gail and Rifat really hate each other , but they are so selfishly alike, so unable to give Jasira any kind words or able see past their own emotional issues.
Eugene Jones III completes the film as Thomas, Jasira’s boyfriend . With massive Bambi eyes, Thomas appears to be too good, but he still is, like we said back then, a horndog, and despite his gulping awkwardness, is still manipulative, just like Travis .
The cinematography by Bryan Singer’s favorite DP, Newton Thomas Sigel is excellent, but, boy-is it dark. Okay, we get that the bright facades of the suburban homes hide the darkness within, but TOWELH______’s interiors have more shadows than THE DARK KNIGHT.
Again, director Ball seemed to be mining AMERICAN BEAUTY, but despite Sigel’s best efforts, including a wonderful crane shot that literally goes up a flagpole, I missed the composition of AMERICAN BEAUTY’s cinematographer:the late, very great Conrad Hall.
The film is filled with a lot of great pop songs from the era like “ Here’s Where The Story Ends “ by The Sundays.
God, I can’t believe I’m writing a phrase like “from the era” to describe songs from the 1990s.
The score by Thomas Newman is so sparse it’s nearly subliminal.
According to Amazon.com, the released soundtrack has under fourteen minutes of music! (So, unless you’re a Thomas Newman completist or a masochist, you should save your money!)
If you look up TOWELHEAD on imdb.com, you won’t find it listed under that name-instead, you’ll find it listed as NOTHING IS PRIVATE-the name it debuted under at the Toronto Film Festival on September 8, 2007.
Imdb.com also shows the release date as September 26, 2008 , but Fandango.com lists it as hitting the arthouse screens on September 12th of this year.
Is it just me, or is Warners Independent trying not to release this film ?
Or are they trying the trickier “let’s release it but not tell anyone” marketing campaign?
As I wrote this review I decided to stay away from checking out the film’s trailer. I really do not want to know how this difficult and controversial film has been broken down into a “feel good” two minute trailer.
Is the film controversial ?
The title certainly is, and Islamic groups across the USA are protesting the film.
The filmmakers have rightly, but perhaps not very vocally, insisted that they are just keeping with the book’s title.
I think if the protesters saw the film, they might be more concerned by the content of the film than the title—which is much more controversial in my opinion, than the title.
To me, the more relevant question is TOWELH_____ a comedy or a drama?
That’s a tough call--it certainly has its darkly funny moments, but I found the story threads permeated the fabric of the film so thoroughly that I couldn’t recover from them, and thus, TOWELH______ became a drama to me, not a comedy,and not a satire.
TOWELH____ is not a satire because a satire is a pointed attack on a specific genre , item or idea.
Robert Altman’s MASH is a satire of war movies and ZAZ’s AIRPLANE! is a silly satire of the 1970s disaster movies, specifically the now-forgotten AIRPORT franchise.
TOWELH_____ is not a coming of age story-it is a troubling and sad story of a girl’s violent loss of innocence and her sexual awakening. The film was made with the best intentions and remarkable sensitivity by writer/director Alan Ball, his crew and the excellent cast, but I did not enjoy watching it and I cannot recommend you see this disturbing film.
FILMGEEKZ.COM FUN FACT: Thomas’ mom is COMING TO AMERICA’s lovely Shari Headley.
Blink twice and you’ll miss her. Rating:
