Racism, teen sex, and war are all hot button issues. When you are a young person these things can seem new and confusing. In Alan Ball's genius Towelhead, all of those above mentioned subjects go hand-in-hand in a truly wonderful cinematic experience.

To call Towelhead exploitative is to miss the point. What made Towelhead the novel so extraordinary was the honesty in Jasira's adolescent narrative voice, the genuine way she misguidedly, but honestly, conflates the sexual attention she receives with the parental affection she really needs. With the film, Ball, though he drops the book's first person narration, is faithful to that voice.

Alternately disturbing, laceratingly satirical and affectingly poignant, the film, which he adapted from the novel, Towelhead, by Alicia Erian, is very much a companion piece to the Ball-penned "American Beauty" in its unwavering examination of the dirty little secrets and raging hypocrisies lurking just beyond all those manicured suburban lawns.

The movie belongs to the fifth-billed Bishil, a truly gutsy young actress who captures the essence of young female desire in all its adolescent confusion.

The result is a movie about the many forms of social and sexual abuse that does not make the abusee a victim but victor.

The movie puts Jasira -- and the audience -- through the wringer, but it also makes the ride worth it.

The story builds to a feverish pitch and then never reaches a satisfactory conclusion. But while it's onscreen, the film moves, incites, and jabs, all while reminding us how difficult it is to grow up female and sane in this world.

Everything about the film is aggressively provocative, in both senses of the word.

A blackly funny provocation.

Ball may not have the answers but he eloquently and forcefully explores some of the potential ramifications. The ending may be too pat, but the journey to get there - bitter, spicy, and poignant - more than compensates for any last-minute fumbles.

It's clever and original with an excellent cast. Ball's script catches a lot of the novel's pop, often word for word. I laughed a lot.

Beautifully acted and accomplishes exactly what writer/director Alan Ball set out to accomplish.

As it becomes clear that Ball, in essence, has just restaged American Beauty with a socially conscious paint job, the sensationalism of Towelhead looks more and more like a dramatic tic.

The heart of the movie is really in Jasira's moments with her father, a mass of contradictions that Macdissi plays with comic ferocity and genuine feeling.