Palindromes

Contemplative provocation is the raison d'etre behind writer-director Todd Solondz's films (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness, Storytelling), but Palindromes is daring in a way that surpasses its inflammatory themes of pedophilia, abortion, selfish parenting, and religious extremism masquerading as piety. It's a film that forces the viewer to get deep inside its troubled heroine's psyche, continually yanking the rug out from us with her inconsistent outward appearance: although played by eight different performers (including a lisping six-year-old girl, an androgynous boy, a 250-lb. African-American woman and Jennifer Jason Leigh), 13-year-old runaway Aviva is always the same meek, hapless, vulnerable but naively resilient girl inside, an empty vessel desperately seeking to be filled with some modicum of unconditional acceptance from unhinged adults. Driven by characters who are almost never what they appear to be on the surface, the story and structure of Palindromes add up to a troubling and powerful question: namely, can people really change, or are we, despite all our complexities, hopes, and aspirations, like Aviva who is (as the title and her name imply) ultimately the same backward and forward? Recommended. (R. Blackwelder)