From wayward Ball comes Crooked Sex

“Towelhead”

Directed by: Alan Ball

Starring: Summer Bishil, Aaron Eckhart, Peter Macdissi, Toni Collette

Rated: R

Showing at: local theaters

In “Towelhead,” the audience is forced to cringe. Witty, dark and extreme — Alan Ball’s directorial film debut is all of these things — yet the result is less than fulfilling.

Many know Ball as the Academy Award-winning writer of “American Beauty” and the creator of HBO’s funeral parlor drama “Six Feet Under.” Audiences recognize his lopsided, eccentric characters and flashy plot turns; admirers appreciate Ball’s penchant for sculpting smart stories that don’t bore but almost always titillate. Detractors criticize his staple theme — sexual awakening — and insist that Ball’s brand of story-building is forced and tactless, as though he’s drawing barbaric cartoon-types rather than sensible humans.

With “Towelhead,” based on the eponymous book by Alicia Erian, he has written and directed a work so unrestrained and guileless that it will leave many viewers uneasy. Those with stronger stomachs (and fewer hesitations about risqué subject matters) will find “Towelhead” devastating but all the while entertaining — an exhilarating look at a pained life.

Jasira, achingly portrayed by Summer Bishil, is a half-Lebanese and half-white 13-year-old growing up in the midst of the first Bush administration when the Gulf War raged and incendiary feelings toward Muslim-Americans heightened. Insecure because of taunting at school, Jasira shaves her pubic hair. But her mother is opposed to such a trimming, and when she finds the curly tuffs in their New York bathtub, she forces her daughter to move across the country to live with her Lebanese father.

That’s how we get to Houston, where blatant racism against any dark-skinned person appears to run as rampant as wild cowboys. Texas is also where Jasira begins her messy sexual maturation, and where she discovers the horrible pains and joys that come with this fruition. Her father is both militant and insincere, and when Jasira becomes flirtatious with a black kid at school, he rages. While this messy situation plays itself out at home, next door lives Travis Vuoso, a scary Aaron Eckhart, who displays some disturbingly pedophilic behavior. Toni Collette plays the watchful neighbor; it’s her role that adds some of the only warmth in this scant, cold production.

In this picture, the display of sexuality is about as pervasive as magic in Harry Potter; it is the twisted, conniving gravity around which the movie revolves and reflects. The aim here is to disturb, to deflower. And it does.

But it’s all just too shocking. Jasira’s parents are written like outlandish Disney characters. At one moment her father, played by a flip-flopping Peter Macdissi, i s affable, even goofy, but in the next he’s screaming at his inherently “dirty” daughter. Jasira’s father is just one of many characters suffering from a severe case of melodrama; instead of acting like rational beings, “Towelhead”’s characters behave in whatever way most horrifies the audience. Her mother is no better — after all, she sends her 13-year-old daughter away to live with her cold, estranged father. Their schizophrenic roles are played well, but it’s impossible to stay standing after braving so many drama quakes.

What saves the film is Ball’s fluid storytelling. For two hours, one painful disaster swiftly births another. With this constant tension rising, it’s difficult to ignore the film’s energy. Tragedy inevitably envelopes the audience, and in that regard, the movie satisfies even those repelled by its provocative subjects.

Ball has created a work that doesn’t read as smoothly as his past projects; his trademark black wit and penchant for drama are evident, but his good taste is lost in “Towelhead.” The movie is like an adorable puppy with incredibly sharp teeth.