In the past ten years, screenwriter Alan Ball has given us two of the most scathing examinations of the frailty of human nature in general, and American life in particular.

Ball’s screenwriting debut, American Beauty was nothing short of a cultural phenomenon when it was released, and though the film doesn’t quite hold up under close scrutiny, its strongest moments likely remain etched in the minds of viewers. His HBO series Six Feet Under benefited from having five years rather than two hours to examine human nature in all its contradictory glory, and its insights into what makes people tick tended toward subtle incrimination and unbearable heartbreak. In Towelhead, his film directing debut, Ball once again tries to walk the razor’s edge of placing flawed but sympathetic characters in shocking but realistic circumstances.

Towelhead is the story of a thirteen-year-old half-Lebanese girl named Jasira (played by Summer Bishil) coming of age in Texas, reconciling her burgeoning sexuality with the draconian rule of her father (Peter Macdissi) and the predatory advances of her racist, lecherous neighbor, Travis (Aaron Eckhart). Ball—who also wrote the film—understands that to be human is inherently paradoxical, and he endows all of his characters with conflicting traits. Jasira is simultaneously innocent and seductive, clumsily wielding a sexuality that came with no instruction manual. Her father is tyrannical but affectionate, relentlessly shielding her from the world while remaining unfailingly oblivious to her troubles. Travis is bigoted yet charming, and viewers sense that he truly cares about Jasira, even as his affections begin their descent down a slippery slope and manifest themselves in the worst possible ways.

As the movie’s title implies, the film attempts to draw a lot of its power through the use of shock value. The scenes where Travis steps over the line with Jasira are clearly meant to be disturbing, but they never quite have the resonance that Ball intends. Part of this is due to the fact that thirteen-year-old Jasira is played by a twenty-year-old actress and, though Bishil is great in the role, it ultimately robs the film’s confrontational scenes of their impact—it’s the art-house equivalent of trying to pretend the thirty-year-old porn-star is actually eighteen because she’s wearing a cheerleading outfit.

This is not to say that having a younger actress in the role would have saved the film. Ball tends to lay everything on just a bit too thick, and the movie repeatedly turns melodramatic. The performances, however, are uniformly solid. Eckhart’s bigoted, dangerous neighbor is played with far more complexity than his Chris Cooper counterpart in American Beauty. Macdissi, best known for his recurring role as an outrageously free-spirited art teacher in Six Feet Under, gets to show more depth in this role than that series allowed him. Maria Bello and Toni Collete—as Jasira’s loving but thick-headed mother and a concerned neighbor, respectively—also deliver solid performances.

I reluctantly, then, place the blame squarely on Ball’s shoulders. While flawed, American Beauty was a groundbreaking film and, without any fear of hyperbole, Six Feet Under is the greatest television show ever made. But with Towelhead, Ball staggers under the cumbersome weight of his story’s devices. His characters are more like chess pieces than real people; you can almost hear Ball declaring, “Check!” every time something cringe-inducing happens. He does, thankfully, infuse the story with a healthy amount of comedy, without which the film might have been even less effective.

Towelhead is by no means a bad film. The writing can at times be razor-sharp, and the actors wring every possible bit of pathos from their roles. For a first-time director, it is a respectable—if not impressive—debut, but it represents a step backward for a writer of Ball’s pedigree. Like the paradoxical characters that inhabit its world, Towelhead is its own worst enemy: ponderous when it should shock, underwhelming when it should awe.

C