Suburban Girl

An Arab-American girl comes of age in suburban Texas in 1991 during the first Gulf War in Alan Ball's pitch-black directing debut, a comic exploration of race, sexuality and community in modern America
From the man who dreamt up American Beauty and 'Six Feet Under' comes this tale of a young girl's sexual awakening that mixes harrowing scenes of abuse with wry and bitter comedy in a way we haven't been exposed to since Todd Solondz's twisted masterpiece Happiness. Almost certain to offend some viewers, audiences are likely to find themselves shifting nervously between dark laughter and ugly discomfort as they strain to make out their shoes in the gloom. Based on the novel 'Towelhead' by Alicia Erian, the film focuses on 13-year-old Jasira, whose sexual curiosity leaves her dangerously vulnerable to male exploitation. When she persuades her mother's boyfriend to help her shave her pubic hair - Ball showing his transgressive agenda from the outset - she is sent as a punishment to live with her strict Lebanese father, Rifat, in the heart of suburban Texas. There she becomes involved in two contrasting relationships - with the sexually predatory middle-aged army reservist Aaron Eckhart who lives next door and with black school friend Thomas (Eugene Jones). Veering wildly in tone, the story at times unravels with the formal simplicity of an old-fashioned theatrical production, building to a slightly contrived denouement where the principal characters are gathered in a single room for a dramatic showdown. Ball's world of social, sexual and familial dysfunction will be familiar to his fans, and once again, he makes use of his trademark suburban locations - the mall, the eaterie, the high school, the lawned bungalows with American flags - alongside 'Six Feet Under'-style flights of character fantasy as young Jasira daydreams about the promise and allure of sex. But as the script chews its way through the minefield of racism and sexual abuse, the film strays into much darker territory than his previous work. It's an ambitious exercise that pulls no punches in the difficult material, and while it's not always entirely successful, there is much to enjoy, not least in the performances themselves. Newcomer Summer Bishil is superb as Jasira, a young girl who is never quite in control of her predicament, nor is she merely a victim of circumstance. Bishil manages to convey with the merest hint of a frown the great weight of her adolescent confusion. An unwitting modern-day Lolita, she moves from child-like self-consciousness to smouldering siren and back again with disconcerting ease - a metamorphosis that's captured in all its moral ambiguity in a scene where she goes to have her portrait taken by a lecherous photographer. Maria Bello, Aaron Eckhart and Toni Collette all provide excellent back-up but it is Peter Macdissi's outlandish caricature as the monstrously self-absorbed father who provides the film with its most memorable character. With pitch-perfect comic timing, Macdissi (who will be recognisable to some as the vain bisexual art teacher Olivier from 'Six Feet Under') manages to pull off the near impossible feat of bringing to life an intermittently violent and racist bully without ever quite squandering the last of the audience's sympathy. The film's main thematic concern seems to be in exploring where the boundary between a community's public and private worlds should be drawn. The title points to an America where everything has already been co-opted for public consumption and control - a place where war footage is beamed in each night as a form of TV entertainment, where the supposed intimacy of sex is repackaged in glossy pornographic magazines, where the colour of one's skin can be turned into a public rebuke, and where a young girl's body can be shaved and violated by the men around her. Throughout, private spaces are transgressed - Jasira roots through her neighbour's porn collection; Rifat rifles through the bins of their kind neighbour Melina, looking for evidence of Jasira's sexual activity and later ends up in the emergency room watching Melina - whom he barely knows - giving birth. Jasira, meanwhile, has to face the confusion of her first period at school and later (in a near unwatchable scene) has her hymen torn by assaulting male fingers. "Who asked you to help?" Jasira snaps at Melina when she shows concern that the girl may be being abused. And this question of social responsibility seems to be at the heart of Ball's film, for as the private sphere is increasingly intruded upon by the public, he also seems to be making a plea for community in a wider sense, in the hope that America's nasty suburban secrets might be brought out into the public domain.
Nothing Is Private is a complex, intelligent but wildly uneven drama that raises all kinds of pertinent questions about the state of modern America but which has an ugly side that is liable to turn off a large section of the crowd who so warmed to American Beauty.