Todd Solondz may be the most self-conscious of movie directors; lately he’s been making films (“Storytelling”) that respond to the way his previous projects have been received.
So it should come as no surprise that “Palindromes” begins with a reference to the Solondz movie that made him a nerdy star of the indie movie circuit, “Welcome to the Dollhouse.” This new film opens with the funeral of the main character from “Dollhouse,” the inimitable “wiener dog,” Dawn Wiener.
But our main character is Dawn’s cousin, Aviva Victor. And she’s like no other heroine in films.
That’s because Solondz has cast the role with a different performer in each section of the story. The first Aviva is a little black girl given some mixed messages by her mom (Ellen Barkin), such as, “You’ll always be the cutest baby … no matter what anybody says.”
After that, Aviva is about 12 or 13, although the ages of the actresses playing her vary. (The performers are unknown, except for a brief scene featuring Jennifer Jason Leigh.) The unfortunate girl’s dream is to become pregnant, which, alas, she does.
A visit to an abortion clinic and hitchhiking with a born-again truck driver follow. In the longest sequence, Aviva is taken into a fairy-tale home run by “Mama Sunshine” (Debra Monk), who adopts handicapped children. The kids practice singing zippy religious pop songs, while Mama Sunshine’s husband plots the murder of abortion doctors.
The film is full of statutory rape, assassination, suicide and other horrors. Solondz maintains a kind of blank attitude toward all this. At times he appears to be lampooning the po’ white trash characters, but at times he seems deadly serious, even sympathetic.
He has said he cast Aviva with different actors to suggest that, although people may change their outward appearance and behavior, nobody really changes in life. That’s the point of the title, too: a palindrome is a word or phrase spelled the same way backwards as forwards, and Solondz sees people that way.
Solondz is messing with ideas that most filmmakers timidly stay away from, and that creates anticipation around each of his movies. His talent for poisoned dialogue and modern disconnection (mother and daughter driving to an abortion clinic past fast-food places while Muzak plays) can be uncanny. But I didn’t like watching “Palindromes,” and the amount of repugnance it feels for the human condition quickly becomes queasy-making.
Shayna Levine and Stephen Adly Guirgis in “Palindromes.”
“Palindromes” HH
Queasy: “Welcome to the Dollhouse” director Todd Solondz uses a bunch of different actresses to play his 13-year-old heroine, whose horrifying adventures include assassination plots and statutory rape. Solondz can capture the poisonous disconnects of modern life, but the movie is queasy-making.
Rated: Not rated; probably R for language, subject matter.
Now showing: Varsity.
“Palindromes” HH
Queasy: “Welcome to the Dollhouse” director Todd Solondz uses a bunch of different actresses to play his 13-year-old heroine, whose horrifying adventures include assassination plots and statutory rape.
Rated: Not rated; probably R for language, subject matter.
Now showing: Varsity.
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