Writer-director Alan Ball’s obsession with the sexuality of teenage girls continues with Towelhead, in which a 13-year-old (Summer Bashil) living with her Lebanese-American father in a Houston suburb during the first Gulf War falls prey to an Army reservist next door (Aaron Eckhart). Ball doesn’t simply tell the story of a girl’s sexual awakening under tragic circumstances. He focuses on the sexiness of the experience, and that’s where things get creepy. As in American Beauty, which Ball wrote, Towelhead depicts its teen characters the way predators see them: as sex objects.
