Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.

I am intrigued by the fury this film seems to have inspired in some viewers. Any time you deal with difficult sexual subject matter, some people are going to automatically snap, and it sounds like Alan Ball is pushing buttons overtly this time out.

But provocation is easy. Is there more to the movie than that? Well, one of our two busiest reviewers from Toronto has seen NOTHING IS PRIVATE, and he’s here to spill all of the film’s secrets. Copernicus... lay it on me:

We know Alan Ball can write Oscar winning material (AMERICAN BEAUTY), and write, direct, and produce Emmy winning TV (SIX FEET UNDER), but with NOTHING IS PRIVATE he's behind the camera for a feature film and he's pointed it like a laser at the contradictions and hypocrisies in American suburbia.

The screenplay was adapted by Ball from the novel Towelhead by Alicia Erian, and is set in Texas in 1991, during the first gulf war. It follows thirteen year old Jasira as she bounces between her mother and her pedophilic boyfriend, an abusive father, a horny boyfriend, racist neighbors and classmates, and pedophile #2, an Army reservist and neighbor (Aaron Eckhart). This is uncomfortable, heavy material, but a streak of dark comedy and the compelling performance of Sumer Bishil pulls the audience through.

After troubles with her mom's boyfriend, Jasira moves out to the suburbs with her father, played brilliantly by another SIX FEET UNDER alum, Peter Macdissi. Jasira's father is Lebanese, and he's trying desperately to fit in and be accepted as an American. He has no accent, he works at NASA, and has a nice house in the suburbs, so you'd think he would fit right in. Yet he goes to ridiculous extremes to prove this, like erecting a flagpole the front yard. At the same time, he hardly knows how to relate to his daughter, who acts like any American teen girl would. With a dad that is overly strict and at times abusive, Jasira turns to the very personification of the American father figure, her next door neighbor and Army reservist, Mr. Vuoso (Aaron Eckhart). He's a blond, strapping guy with a wife and kid, a truck, a stack of porn, and yes, a flagpole. Mr. Vuoso turns out to be a perv, and while Jasira is navigating that minefield yet another guy is pawing at her, this time schoolmate Thomas (Eugene Jones). The problem is that Thomas is black and even though Jasira and her father are routinely called towelhead and worse, Jasira is forbidden to see Thomas because her father thinks no one will respect
her if she dates a black man.

Ball shows that the American suburbs have all social jockeying and judgment of Victorian England, but the manners don't run as deep. There is posturing all around to prove who is the most American, who has the strongest values, but with so much friction between the neighbors the thin veneer of politeness is quickly ground away. There are decent neighbors too, notably Melina, played by Toni Collette, and her husband Gil (Matt Letscher). This isn't a one dimensional excoriation of American culture, only of a certain kind of mentality that values the appearance of decency over the real thing.

Even though some of the antagonists in NOTHING IS PRIVATE do some pretty despicable things, most are fully realized, complicated characters. In fact, nearly every character has some kind of baggage, though some have flaws that lead to more serious consequences than others. But among a stellar cast, Peter Macdissi as Jasira's dad steals the show. As the outsider to America, his character has some of the best one-line indictments of American culture, and their humor is underscored by his own hypocrisy. It would have been easy to play this role as a stereotype, but he keeps far away from that trap. He
is such a mess of conflicted emotions that you never know exactly what he's going to do, and when he lashes out he is either hilarious or heartbreaking, or often both. Rather than showing alternating callousness and affection, somehow he manages to portray both simultaneously.

So far at TIFF, I think I've seen most of the candidates for best picture, and I have to say that NOTHING IS PRIVATE is the front-runner in my mind. It may not be the absolute best picture of the year (my heart is with the Coen brothers), but it certainly resonates the loudest. It may be a tough sell in the heartland to have a judging finger pointed straight back at yourself, but sometimes deep down we all realize we need it. That kind of thing goes over like gangbusters in the Hollywood Oscar-voting set. But most importantly, NOTHING IS PRIVATE is American filmmaking at its finest.