When a male director films a gritty, visceral look at life -- a "Mean Streets," a "Reservoir Dogs" or a "Trainspotting" -- it's usually taken at face value and praised as "muscular" moviemaking. Let a woman try the same thing and she's apt to find herself being chided for trying to "out-macho" her male counterparts, as has Ana Kokkinos, the Australian director of "Head On." Sexism aside -- "I thought the press here had matured past that kind of thing," was Kokkinos' only comment about it during a conversation we had in June -- with "Head On," the insinuation seems all the more misguided given that most of the film's action also takes place in its source, Christos Tsiolkas' novel "Loaded." If anything, Kokkinos was in competition with the book, in which a rebellious, drug-devouring 19-year-old describes his fucked-up world. She reworks what was mostly a series of monologues in "Loaded" into vivid scenes, and trumps the book by supplying the techno-infused soundtrack it implies.

Ari, the nihilist protagonist, has two solutions for every quandary in his life: rough sex and even rougher drugs. He's the type of self-indulgent lout audiences either find captivating or exasperating -- particularly when the entire narrative unfolds from the lout's point of view, as it does here. What intrigued me about Ari was the way he, like many kids his age, uses his body to thrash out his metaphysical conflicts. During the slightly more than 24 hours in his life the film depicts, he gets an inkling that an easier strategy might exist, though he's a ways off from shifting paradigms.

"Head On," which has begun to pop up in U.S. art houses, was a box-office hit in Australia -- something of a surprise given its modest budget and trippy style. Heavy doses of hand-held, choppy and swooping camerawork give the film an edgy feel, one that's accentuated by the contributions of editor Jill Bilcock, who cut the equally frenetic "Romeo + Juliet." Kokkinos goes overboard in spots and isn't above hot-dogging with the camera angles, but in general the cinematography complements Ari's emotional state.

Kokkinos puts a specifically Greek-Australian spin on a familiar coming-of-age tale. Everyone around Ari, especially his family, offers the same predictable advice: Get a job. Get married. "Then you can do whatever you want," his friend's mom tells him -- a stance he finds too hypocritical. As a "wog," or foreigner, in a Melbourne suburb, Ari doesn't fit in with the white majority. "They look at us and all they see is a hairy back," he says of Anglo girls. But his parents and their generation -- many of them political activists in Greece during the 1970s -- seem not to notice the psychic upheaval immigration has induced in their offspring. Lacking imagination, most of the kids opt for what Ari derides as the marriage-mortgage compromise.

Alex Dimitriades, an Australian TV star and teen heartthrob, plays Ari with robust impetuosity. All his sex being metaphorical, Ari lurches into some skanky episodes, not the least of them an Oedipal back-alley tussle with a portly fellow his father's age. Ari's at first debased when he's forced to give head -- until now, he's only been the top -- but afterward recoups a portion of his pride by forcing the guy to jerk him off. When his partner momentarily gets caught up in the act's intensity and makes a slight move to kiss him, Ari brutally twists the man's head away and maintains the hold until finally shooting. Kokkinos choreographs the scene to mirror an earlier one in which Ari's father attempts to seduce his son back into the enveloping comfort of patriarchal affection during an impromptu Greek dance they share. Both scenes emphasize the grip Ari's family and heritage have on him, and from the dance it's apparent that the ties binding him aren't entirely negative.

What's telling about Ari's tryst is that whatever self-respect he's regained at its conclusion is on the old terms -- namely, macho one-upmanship. But the older man is paradoxically the first person to force Ari to accept his sexual vulnerability. Given his chemical intake, however -- Ari has already shot up, smoked, snorted various drugs and had several drinks to boot -- most of this is lost on him in the short run.

Ari has so much homosex, and is so trashily proficient at it from the get-go, that it took a while for it to dawn on me that "Head On" is also his coming-out story. Ari hasn't yet accepted being queer -- the sex for him is always about something else. Early on, he meets a white Aussie, Sean, who sees more of Ari's potential than Ari does himself. Sean's projected too far into the future -- it's hard to learn much in a day, and Ari is a slow learner in any case -- but in their interactions lies the nucleus of his transformation.

The themes "Head On" juggles -- sexual identity, cultural alienation, conformity, individuality -- lend themselves to didacticism. For the first hour or so Kokkinos, who's Greek-Australian herself, merges her philosophical observations into the action. Toward the end, though, she falters. In a scene that's not in the book, Ari and his cross-dressing friend Toula (nee Johnny), who's been teaching him about standing up for one's truth, get themselves arrested while tripping. One of the cops is a textbook white racist. The other's a Greek guy who's trying to assimilate and becomes infuriated and embarrassed by what Toula represents as a Greek. Only the sly performance of Paul Capsis as the sassy Toula gives any bite to the less-than-subtle confrontation.

Its missteps and excesses aside, "Head On" is a promising feature film debut for Kokkinos, who previously directed the hour-long drama "Only the Brave," about a Greek-Australian lesbian teen's coming out. The director puts Ari through no end of macho paces -- though nothing anywhere near as gross as the ear surgery in "Reservoir Dogs" or the toilet scene in "Trainspotting" -- but doesn't revel in his bravado. She's clearly fond of the character, even moved by his predicament. I'd almost say she nurtures him, for despite his fatalistic ranting that closes the film, I think she sees a future for a boy with this much fire in him. But then, that'd be stereotyping her, wouldn't it?