Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here. For some strange and twisted reason, two films opened today that feature child rape as a focal point. These are two radically different films and two completely different looks at this unspeakable act. One takes the act on as a purely evil act, and one is a bit more complicated and less simple than that. But the fact is that these movies are out there, and both will make you feel icky inside a various points.

TOWELHEAD
The film that takes the subject more seriously and examines the deeper ramifications of the act (without making the moment as easy to dismiss) is the feature directorial debut from Oscar-winning writer Alan Ball (AMERICAN BEAUTY), who also created the superior HBO dramas "Six Feet Under" and "True Blood." Based on the novel by Alicia Erian, TOWELHEAD is a powerfully realized and difficult drama about 13-year-old Jasira (newcomer Summer Bishil), a Lebanese-American girl whose mother (Maria Bello) forces here to live with her father (Peter Macdissi) in Houston in the 1980s, during the first president Bush's term just as the first Gulf War was becoming a reality. With a hint of things to come in a sequence involving Jasira and her mother's misguided boyfriend, Ball makes it clear right off the bat that this story is going to challenge our notions of appropriate and inappropriate, but he does so not in a playful, winking manner, but with the perfect blend of seriousness and confusion.

Jasira perfectly encapsulates the vessel for all of the world's mixed messages about beauty, sex, and power. Her father is incredibly controlling and conservative, but he flaunts his vivacious new girlfriend every chance he gets. Jasira sees advertisements with gorgeous women, skims through dirty magazines while she's babysitting the son of neighbor Mr. Vuoso (Aaron Eckhart in one of his best roles), and is taught unfortunate lessons about where a woman's power is generated. With no clear female role model in her life to help her sift through it all, Jasira translates and incorporates these signals into her own two-fold sexual awakening, through a flirtation with Vuoso and a more conventional relationship with a fellow student, a black kid named Thomas. The Gulf War also provides the impetus for another set of message aimed at Jasira, those regarding race. Kids at school and the young boy she babysits all barrage her with racist behavior, but even as her father attempts to teach her to stand up for herself and resist such verbal attacks, he forbids her from seeing Thomas because he's black and he thinks associating with him will somehow cheapen her reputation.

As far too many girls and young women do, Jasira looks for human connection in the form of ill-advised sexual encounters with both the men her life. While Thomas is a sweet and caring kid, Vuoso objectifies her in order to make what he does to her easier. He sees her as a girl who has developed faster than other girls her age, and somehow uses this as justification. The part of the plot that some people might have the most trouble with is that Jasira is not totally blameless, which in no way justifies what happens to her, but it may make it more difficult for some to simply view Vuoso as a monster. After something of a history playing bastards in his early films with writer-director Neil LaBute (IN THE COMPANY OF MEN), Eckhart is one of the few actors on the planet that doesn't have to worry about a role like this endangering his career. Beyond that, however, he plays this part brilliantly, capturing Vuoso's own confusion and weak center. We never get the sense that he's a serial pedophile, and his confusion about what he's doing is quite clear.

In the film's third act, another neighbor, played by Toni Collette, enters the picture as something of a much-needed savior for Jasira. And while I thought her introduction into the story might have been a bit of an easy save for the young girl's many dilemmas, it still feels like the place this film needed to go. TOWELHEAD is not the story of a victim. Instead it is the story of a survivor, an actual heroine who makes declarations about her life, needs, and wants by the end of the film that are shocking and completely necessary. I hosted a screening of this film a few weeks ago, and I prefaced the experience by asking the audience to stick with the film even if it got a bit to uncomfortable to do so. The concluding few scenes are so uniquely stunning and gratifying that is makes all of the discomfort worth it. Ball's visual style manages to make the movie feel both naturalistic and other worldly, almost like a dream or a memory. TOWELHEAD is a film you will never forget, and you will never want to.

HOUNDDOG
A warning: watching this movie will make you never want to hear any version of the song "Hounddog" again, especially Elvis Presley's version. Set in late-'50s Alabama, the Sundance scandal that is HOUNDDOG concerns a resourceful young girl named Lewellen (the talented Dakota Fanning) and her never-ending attempts to eek out existence in her cabin in the woods. She doesn't get much help from her father (David Morse), who never wanted her in the first place and is often long absent from home, leaving Lewellen home alone. With the girl's mother long dead, her father is seeing a nice woman named Ellen (Robin Wright Penn), who turns out to be the girl's aunt. In a house nearby lives Lewellen's grandmother (Piper Laurie), who would seem like the most able to raise the girl, but she doesn't for reasons I'm not quite clear on. Lewellen is obsessed with Elvis Presley, and can do a fairly spot-on impersonation of him singing "Hounddog" and other songs complete with hit twists and pelvis thrusts. It's a little weird but still cute.

Lewellen is a curious child. In an early scene, we see her playing a game of "I'll Show you Mine..." with a young male friend. She also spends a great deal of time with a local black caretaker (Afemo Omilami), who teaches her about real R&B music, versus that tame stuff Elvis is putting out. When word gets out that Elvis is coming to town, Lewellen does everything in her power to get a ticket, a fact that puts her in a dangerous position later in the film. If you've heard anything about this movie at all since it's premiere at Sundance, then you probably have heard it referred to as the "Dakota Fanning Rape Movie." But what shocked me about Hounddog wasn't that Lewellen is raped; it's that the usually smart Fanning agreed to be in a movie this scattershot and rambling. After leaving home for a time, Morse returns and is struck by lightening, which leaves him simple and unable to care for himself. Laurie seems to be doing a variation of her role as the constrictive mother in Carrie, and there were times when I was certain she was going to yell out ,"They're all going to laugh at you." I suppose in the end there's a message here about doing what's best for yourself and regaining your sense of self, but it's so buried in 50 other non-essential themes that the whole piece ends up feeling muddled and self-indulgent.

The only thing about HOUNDDOG worth mentioning is Fanning's performance. In no way is this girl holding back. And while I rarely if ever use words like brave in talking about any actor's performance, Fanning is brave for taking this role in an otherwise dismal movie. I guess she can take comfort in the fact that almost nobody will see this movie, and that most of the world will probably see her next in the far more accessible and safe THE SECRETE LIFE OF BEES in mid-October. HOUNDDOG isn't a failure because it's gross; it's bad because it tries too hard to be some sort of Southern Gothic, soul-searching set piece rather then embracing what it truly is--a tale of dysfunctional, inbred rednecks.

-- Capone
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