An average movie

Honestly, I had no idea what this movie was about so I seriously didn't know what to expect from it. Eventually, when the end credits rolled out, I discovered it was directed by Alan Ball, the creator of 'Six Feet Under', one of my favorite TV shows ever, and this was his directing debut. Well, even though it was an intriguing tale about the sexual awakening of a very young girl, it was also one hell of a creepy movie. I mean, right from the start, when the stepfather start shaving the private parts of his 13 years old step-daugther, the whole thing felt pretty awkward and it never got better. As a matter of fact, it had some similar aspects to 'American Beauty' (also written by Alan Ball), except that this time, Kevin Spacey would have sex with the girl and the girl wouldn't be 16 but 13 years old. Yeah, it is that kind of movie... And to make things even worse, they tried to convince the viewers that there was some ground for this 'romantic' relationship and, finally, I thought that they really overly sexualized this child. I know, I make it sounds as if it was terrible, but even though it was indeed a tough watch, there was some interesting things. First of all, all the characters had some depth and the acting was pretty good, especially by Summer Bishil. Eventually, there were just way too many characters, there was also some racial issues as if teenage anxiety was not enough and it was all too much to handle and all this sexuality was seriously poorly handled. To conclude, even though I have weak spot for Alan Ball's work, his directing debut was a failure and I don't think it is really worth a look.

5/10