The commercials for this film will make you think it's a coming of age/fish-out-water type of comedy. It's not. It's a dark and fairly disturbing portrayal of a young girl of mixed heritage who both receives and gives very mixed sexual messages. She is sent away from her mother's home in Syracuse to live with her father in Texas because, according to her mother (in a creepy foreshadowing), she "needs to learn how to behave around men." There are definitely moments of humor in this film - I went to a screening where Alan Ball did a Q&A afterward, and he spoke of how his sense of humor saves him from a sense of despair, and I think that this illustrates the role of humor in the film.
There are also disturbing, graphic scenes of sexual abuse in this film that make me never want to read the book it's based on (according to Ball, the scenes are more graphic in the book). I was mentioning this film to a co-worker who was very surprised - she said her daughter (in high school) wanted to see "Towelhead" because she thought, based on the commercials, it would be something like the movie Juno - SO not.
All that being said, the acting is superb across the board.
There are also disturbing, graphic scenes of sexual abuse in this film that make me never want to read the book it's based on (according to Ball, the scenes are more graphic in the book). I was mentioning this film to a co-worker who was very surprised - she said her daughter (in high school) wanted to see "Towelhead" because she thought, based on the commercials, it would be something like the movie Juno - SO not.
All that being said, the acting is superb across the board.