User Reviews

I adore what I've seen of Todd Solondz's films (I adore Welcome To The Dollhouse and Happiness but didn't see Storytelling), so of course I walked into the theater with high expectations.

Ellen Barkin (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) did a stellar job as the pro-abortion supportive mother of the 13-year-old main character who's only desire is to have babies, lots and lots of babies! The whole film is centered around a gimmick that didn't work for me while I watched it. A different girl or woman would play the main girl, Aviva, in each chapter. 'Mama Sunshine' Aviva, played by Sharon Wilkins (I, Robot), is a large black woman who's backside is featured on the poster. She did a fine job, but the parts of the film that have the strongest emotional impact are the scenes where the actress playing Aviva actually resembles the character's age. It's much harder, emotionally, to watch a 13-year-old girl go through the events depicted in the film. That was also my problem with Jennifer Jason Leigh (eXistenZ)'s scene, but hers was a short one.

After the movie was over I kept asking myself "Why? Why did he have seven actresses playing Aviva?" I started thinking maybe it was saying that Aviva is all girls/women, but if that was the case I thought it was a pretty weak concept, especially at the expense of the film's impact.

Then it occurred to me that what (I think) he was doing was showing us Aviva's self-image. When this occurred to me it got me really thinking and it made total sense! In the first scene she is a little black girl because she feels like someone who clearly doesn't belong to her family, a complete outcast, a little black girl in a white family. When Aviva first has sex she is a little overweight with slouched shoulders, pretty yet plain and awkward. When she runs away she is tiny, little waif of a thing, a little ant in a big scary world. Then when she's at Mama Sunshine's she is an obese black adult woman because she has seen the world, feels much older, feels completely removed from her family and feels huge and awkward in a body she no longer knows at all - and she feels like a complete fraud, that is why she is played by someone who looks NOTHING like she normally does. At the return party she is played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, an actress in her 40s, because she feels so old, like she's seen so much of the world.

I loved it! It made sense. It had a powerful message. I could relate completely. We never see ourselves except in photos and reflections so our self image is completely emotional. Todd Solondz was trying to capture that feeling and did it magnificently. It was subtle, beautiful and heartbreaking.

A few other things I loved was Alexander Brickel (Satan's Little Helper), the little boy who played Peter Paul. He was so incredible! What a hilarious and charming child actor. Good child actors are SO rare. Also, the opening sequence with Dawn Wiener's funeral and then Ellen Barkin explaining to the young Aviva why Dawn's parents never loved her... great comedy! The last sequence where we had an epileptic fit of all the Avivas through the course of the film didn't work so well, but it does go with my above theory.

Overall, it was an amazing film with a few small flaws, definitely worth viewing but not as powerful as Welcome To The Dollhouse or Happiness, but incredible nonetheless.

"I'm going to be a mommy," says Aviva, the multi-faced protagonist of controversial director Todd Solondz's "Palindromes". After her parents force her to have an abortion at the age of thirteen, Aviva runs away and hopes to get pregnant again. What she doesn't know is that the doctor at the clinic slipped-up, and left her sterile.

Solondz has never been one to go mainstream, or make "fun" movies. His works, such as "Welcome to the Dollhouse" (which "Palindromes" is a kinda/sorta sequel to) are uncomfortable to watch. Why? Because they are more truthful and honest then we expect a movie to be. Solondz shows real-life issues in lower and middle class American families who face the harshest realities, and he pulls no punches. This is not your typical multi-plex fare. Not at all.

"Palindromes" is about Aviva, cousin of Dawn Wiener from "Welcome to the Dollhouse". Dawn has just recently killed herself (no surprise there, really), and a five-year old, and black, Aviva vows to never be like her cousin. Eight years later, Aviva (now white, teenaged, and overweight) has her first sexual encounter and gets pregnant. Her mother (Ellen Barkin, in a truly inspired performance) tells Aviva (still white, but now skinny and with red hair) that she will have to have an abortion. Aviva is devastated, as she longs to be a mother. Following the botched procedure, Aviva runs away and embarks on a transformative journey.

You've likely guessed that the transformation here is physical, not spiritual. Aviva changes appearance from chapter to chapter, but the person she is inside never changes. Whether she's a skinny white girl or a massive black woman Aviva is still a lost little girl, adrift in a world she can't understand. All she has to go by are her warped perceptions of love, which lead her to the arms of a pervert who likes to go out and kill abortion doctors in his free time.

"Palindromes" leans heavily to the side of pro-life. Solondz vilifies abortion clinics and pro-choicers to an almost extreme degree. Here are examples:

Aviva's mother refers to an unborn child as being "like a tumor". Aviva is shown a dump where aborted fetus' are haphazardly thrown away. The clinic botches the abortion. Aviva's pro-choice family includes an accused child molester.

I was rather shocked at first, being a pro-choice person myself, but I can not deny that Solondz has created a powerful indictment of the practice of abortion. I'll never give up the pro-choice platform (everyone has a right to choose, after all), but now I'm not so sure I'd ever personally want an abortion for any of my loved ones.

Solondz also shows that unwanted children don't necessarily have to be aborted, and that they can have good lives if adopted or sent to foster homes. When Aviva meets Mama Sunshine, "mother to all of God's children", we are shown a household where disabled and sick children can lead happy lives. Mama Sunshine has taken in blind children, crippled children, limbless children, and retarded children, and she gives them all good lives. It makes you wonder if Aviva couldn't have given her child a life like this rather than having to be forced to kill it.

At the end of it all "Palindromes" ends appropriately. IE: as it began. There is a wonderful scene in which Aviva's (supposedly) perverted relative makes a speech about how no one changes, how life is essentially a palindrome. It makes us wonder if the effort Aviva went through to change things was worth it, when we know where she'll always end up. Or do we? Does life have to be a palindrome? Or is there a way to change that, once and for all?

This is the year's boldest, most provocative film. It is fearless in it's search for answers, and it requires the viewer to be fearless if they are to get anything out of watching. Please see this film. And don't be afraid to question yourself afterwards.

"Palindromes" is not a film with answers to the questions, it's a film with questions about our answers.

While not exactly a 'part 2' kind of sequel to Welcome to the Dollhouse, Palindromes is more than a film just set in the same universe. Several characters from Dollhouse are featured and many references are made to events in said previous movie. It's best to be familiar with Dollhouse first before watching Palindromes.

Dawn Weiner, our lovely protagonist from Dollhouse, is dead. She committed suicide after getting pregnant from a date-rape. And even in death people cannot hold back on talking trash about her. Her 12-year-old cousin Aviva (she IS 12, a lot of people are mentioning various ages, she only turns 13 at the end) is so affecting by her tragic life that she vows to never turn out like her.

Her mum (Ellen Barkin who appears to have had some dodgy face-lift) promises that will never happen as she loves Aviva more than Dawn's family loved her. Which could not be further than the truth. As soon as she becomes pregnant to some horny boy Aviva's mum shows her true colors. She is selfish, ignorant and downright cruel. Her dad also. They may well be angry but that's no excuse for the pressure they put her under.

Aviva is forced into having an abortion. But it goes wrong and she ends up having an emergency hysterectomy. Thinking only of the effect it has upon herself, Aviva's mum keeps this part secret from her. Obviously devastated at the lost of her unborn child, Aviva takes off on a journey to find a new lover and make a new baby, unaware that she never will.

Upon this journey Aviva is played by many different actresses, all of whom portray her with the same facial expressions and mannerisms. She meets a variety of characters, including her cousin Mark (Dawn's older brother), a trucker who isn't a pedo but loves her anyway and family of disabled Jesus loving Christians who secretly fund abortionist assassinations.

It's bizarre and sometimes outrageous journey full of some typical Todd Solondz moments; scenes where the far-fetched becomes very believable because human-nature often stretches beyond normality when no one is looking. It was sad to see that Mark Weiner's life ruined in the way that it is. But he came through as a more mature and sympathetic character than the bully older brother he was before. And he did have some good scenes.

Now, about the whole pre-teen sexuality thing. I do not have a problem with this but I know a lot of people do. I don't find anything offensive about it but this is the third time Solondz has tackled the subject. Is he into it? Is he against it? Does he find it humorous? Or does he just use it as an easy way to rile us up and make us react? While it's integral to the story, it's not anything a fan of Solondz hasn't seen before.

Palindromes more than about a girl who's name is the spelled forwards as backwards. It's a film about how life goes around in circles and no one really ever changes or goes anywhere. It sounds like a pointless journey when I put it that way. But it's worth it.

Some movies bring members of the audience together, and some divide them. "Palindromes" is a movie that no one seems to agree on; even the people who love it seem to love it for different reasons ('Sickly great!' claims one review on IMDb; 'Strange and ugly but original and necessary' says another – though I'm not sure I particularly want to see 'necessary' films). It's directed by Todd Solondz, whose controversial "Happiness" was about everything but happiness. This time, he is taking on the subject of teenage pregnancies, with hilarious consequences/heart-breaking results (depends on whom you listen to). I didn't find it heart-breaking or hilarious; by trying to be both, it's neither.

The central character of "Palindromes" is Aviva. She becomes pregnant aged thirteen and runs away from home after her parents force her to have an abortion. Throughout the movie, she is played by different actresses, most of whom are relatively unknown, except for – all too briefly – Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Aviva (whose name, as you may have spotted, is a palindrome) discovers a little commune of Christians which is happy to take her in. It is run by Mama Sunshine, who bakes the best Jesus Tear Drop cookies in the state. The children she looks after are all disabled in one way or another. She is played by Debra Monk as a caricature of a kind, conservative Christian, but how else could the role be played? I am relieved to discover that Monk's next role is as one of the Little Old Ladies in the new musical film of "The Producers," a character with much more scope for development.

You may notice what Solondz is doing here; he is reversing the stereotypes. We have Aviva's mother (played by Ellen Barkin), who is not only in favour of abortion; she demands it, almost violently, of her daughter. And we have Mama Sunshine who represents the American religious Right, but she is full of, well, sunshine; why get angry when you can make such good cookies? Among the other colourless characters Aviva meets on her journey are Judah, who prefers to be called Otto (can you guess why?) another thirteen year old whom she has sex with, and a paedophile lorry driver who sleeps with her, and later turns out to be working for Mama Sunshine's family as a hired assassin to kill abortion doctors. Subtlety is not this film's strong point.

There will be some who interpret the film differently from me and think I'm missing the point. Personally, I was disappointed to see someone of Solondz's talent resort to this crowbar satire; if pro-life people get annoyed at the way the Mama Sunshine character is shown, I can hardly blame them. Of course, humour is the most subjective of things, and you'll either laugh or you won't. I admired the way that Solondz does not give an easy answer to the extremely tricky issue of abortion, and I think the film may provoke useful discussions on the subject. I also sort of liked the device of using different actresses in the same role; it blurs the boundaries between the characters and extends the story to all young girls in this position. And I was surprised by the ultimate message of the movie; that we are who we are, backwards and forwards (like a palindrome), and that no one really changes.

All this time though, the movie is devoid of characters. Aviva, her mum, Mama Sunshine, the paedophile; none of these is a character. They're all caricatures. Despite the movie's intelligence, I never got emotionally involved at all, and I never laughed at the humour (when Mama Sunshine mourns the fact that one of the girls has run away, despite the fact 'she didn't have any legs,' I didn't laugh; I averted my eyes from the screen in embarrassment). In "Happiness," an equally tricky movie, I was emotionally involved; is there a more painful scene in recent memory than the one where Dylan Baker has to explain to his son why he is being called a paedophile in the neighbourhood? His character, along with Philip Seymour Hoffman's and the others, were, for all their faults, human beings. In "Palindromes," the actors are never really given an opportunity to act; they all wear the same expression all through the movie. That may well be Solondz's point, but it is at the expense of our empathy for them.

I'm not saying all movies have to do the same thing. I agree with Pauline Kael when she said 'movies can give us almost anything; almost everything.' But what does "Palindromes" give us, really? Solondz takes a tricky problem, presents it, and lets us make up our own minds. In that sense, the movie is admirable, but it's not much else.

The 13 years old Aviva Victor is a heroine of Todd Solondz's new film "Palindromes". She is the only daughter of the loving parents but she is not happy and the only thing she passionately wants – to become a mother and to have a lot of babies. She gets pregnant at 13 and forced by her mother goes through an abortion. As the result of the procedure gone wrong, she will never be pregnant again. Aviva runs from home and enters the world populated by very strange, often dangerous but always multi-layered characters. What makes this movie rather unusual, Solondz chose eight different actresses (in age, color, and shape) to play Aviva. The writer/director explains the experiment by his desire to make as many women and girls as possible identify themselves with the girl in the search for love and understanding. Aviva is not a real girl, really, she is an archetype of a woman who longs for love and tenderness and who is absolutely innocent in her search for them, often in the wrong places with the wrong strangers.

As for the title, — a palindrome is a word, phrase, verse, or sentence that reads the same backward or forward. In the way, it is a metaphor for life. The word dies just after been born when it reads letter by letter backwards. It is self destruction. The same applies to Aviva (her name is a palindrome, BTW) – she and the world around her are static, she is in the vicious circle and she can't break it. You can not move on if you just walk in circles. Even if it seems that the world around Aviva and she always change (that's why she's got so many different faces), she is still the same – no matter if she is a little girl, an awkward teenager, a heavy black woman or frightfully youthful Jennifer Jason Leigh.

Even though, I respect Solontz's decision to tell the parable rather than the story of one particular girl, I think that choosing eight actresses was one of the "Palindromes'" weaknesses. The idea was interesting but not all of the performers were up to the task and the constant switching of the actresses was rather distracting.

I admire Solondz for his fierce uncompromising bravery – he knows that his films will never be the crowd pleasers - but he keeps making them.. I am not sure if I like "Palindromes" but I keep thinking about it, and I know I would - for long time.

Solondz introduced Palindromes as "a delicate film with some trickery" before I screened it at SXSW. Negating the shock and awe of the underage octo-lead character (you'll understand about 25-30 minutes in) bedding down and falling in love with a pedophile, the storytelling is beset with enough lambasting humor that it garners afterthoughts of "oh-kay" as opposed to "whoah." "Happiness"— Solondz's measuring stick— ultimately achieves the opposite, which is why Palindromes is only as memorable as its title applies and insinuates.

Its delicacy is in its unflinching bravery to expose what most independent filmmakers can and will only attempt to suggest. How can one artist be so elegant with such subject manner and not be jailed is tribute enough. (SPOILER ALERT) Solondz's trickery comes this time (the whole "Storytelling" box out scene in retrospect seems childish and silly) in the form of multiple actresses playing the same part (it's a statement in of itself about our melting pot). But this is only a facade of his manipulations. All at once we become consumed by his humorous, not withstanding pretentious ploys and fall stomach-twisting first into a disheartening and captivating snapshot of today's American Average (rather that's New Jersey Average). When it's all tied up with a preachy bookend, one reflects back to the beginning of Aviva's escapades (the title character's name) and wonders what the hell was so funny anyway.

Note that preachy bookend too, which obviously is an in the face attempt to disprove once and for all his dirty-minded skeptics that he is indeed NOT as his artistic endeavors would suggest anything like his characters— in the form of Mike Wiener (brother of Dawn from "Welcome to the Dollhouse") much ados Solondz's efforts as his title suggests: he is not going to change, so deal with it. I just hope Todd grows a little fatter, or darker, or less self-evasive with his lavish lamentations of all that ales Americana.

Solondz has done it again. Usually when you hear that, it's a good thing. It is rather telling that Solondz is harshest to characters that reflect the people that are most likely to see his movies, and gives essentially a free pass to those that he constantly claims should like his movies just as much, those from flyoverville. In this one, Ellen Barkin calls a baby a "tumor" and talks about getting an abortion like it was fun. On the other side, Mama Sunshine, while her zeal makes her a caricature to be scorned by the hip or at least people with some sense of self-perception, is a decent, loving and caring person, even if her husband has doctors killed.

Many of the reviews say that the story bogs down when Aviva leaves home. No, the story doesn't take off until then. The parent characters are the same stupid borderline anti-Semitic stereotypes shown in his crappy "Storytelling." Richard Masur doesn't have a character at all.

As for direction, the first Aviva and almost all of the kids in the Mama Sunshine camp speak all their lines as if they're reading them off cue cards. This has the feel of being intentional, like they're supposed to sound as manufactured as if they are in a TV show, but it just doesn't work.

The main word to describe Solondz is "disingenuous." He looks out at the camera in the new Time Out spread with those creepy James Spader eyes and talks about how much he feels for his character; or in NYTimes about how children in his movies are treated with dignity. Dignity. He purposely films each actress in the most unflattering way he can so they are actively unpleasant to look at. The camera lovingly caresses the gut of the "Judah" Aviva, the redhead is almost always shot from just looking up her nose and catching her buck teeth, and I'm sure the boy is a star in the locker room now.

Honestly, without Debra Monk this movie would be as bad as "Storytelling" (and that's pretty bad), but she just has such heart and conviction that you really start buying into the story. Up until that point you are much better off renting "Citizen Ruth" or reading the play "Keely and Du" by Jane Martin. The disabled kids are made fun of by giving them pseudo-brady bunch dialogue, but the satire here A) isn't funny and B)has no teeth. Peter Paul is a fine creation, but the rest of them really are just being exploited for the sake of being exploited, and the only joke that lands is the only one he doesn't make out loud (that the blonde kid that can dance is there to be cured of the happies).

The grave pronouncement made by characters, and we're always supposed to know they're being made by unreliable narrators, are just silly baiting. Most of the dialogue is written that way. The actual film gets rolling when Stephen Adly Guirgis and one of the better Avivas play Bonnie and Clyde, from then on it is bearable with the exception of a short repast back to snipe at Ellen Barkin's character again.

It is uncanny, this guy really just can't get enough of making fun of Jews. Julie Hagerty and John Goodman, the least Jewish people in the world, in Storytelling, aside from whoever played Scooby, and her with the Aleph-Bet t-shirt on. I don't care if he's Jewish and wanted to be a rabbi, the worst thing about his relentless mocking of Jews is the fact that his jokes about them are NOT FUNNY. You can get away with a lot just by being funny, and Solondz found that out back when he made Happiness because back then he was funny.

"Fear, Anxiety and Depression" is overrated as a cult movie, "Welcome to the Dollhouse" is overrated as a significant movie, "Happiness" is the only film he has made that lives up to the hype and it would be a masterpiece if he didn't himself seem not to get it and only to mis-learn from it that offensive is insightful. His films since seem like the Alanis Morrissette song "Ironic" where nothing that she says is actually ironic. In Happiness the characters were incredibly, sometimes fatally flawed, but tragically unavoidably sympathetic. In Storytelling and this one they are, other than one or two of the Avivas, Debra Monk and Stephen Guirgis, just stupid and one-dimensional. It's like he's telling you with a sneer that he's created a perfect paradox, and he obviously hasn't. This is what he has done with the Ellen Barkin character, putting arguments she would never use into her mouth to make her artificially ridiculous.

He also does not adequately explain something: we see the film almost entirely from Aviva's perspective, and she ostensibly hears that she can't get pregnant again. Is the way she keeps trying because she knows but is trying anyway, hoping for a miracle? Or did he not adequately explain that we saw that and understood it but she didn't? Anyway, the Jesus band is a really easy shot but that segment is probably the strongest, and makes the entire movie bearable.

As for having all of the different actresses…it might have been better to have one GOOD actress, then we wouldn't have had to twiddle our thumbs for segments at a time.

Did I mention "Storytelling" stunk? And I'd like to smack him for bringing "Belle and Sebastian" all the way over just for that.

I almost never write comments on films although I go to films 3-4 times a week. I have seen all of Todd's previous films and although never a fan of his work I have always found his films watchable. I have also always enjoyed his perverse sensibility even when the films themselves seem pointless and indulgent. Palindromes has pushed me over the edge and now I feel unlikely to ever see a TS film again. Why? I suddenly feel that all of Todd's films are part of a big sick joke that he is playing on us all. I pity the critics who revere this film. You are kidding!

The notion of using 7-8 different actors to play Aviva was extremely distracting. The actual "story" was very unpleasant and offered no perspective or point of view on the unpleasantness. The Sunshine family musical parts were so offensive. I truly felt as if these poor children were being objectified by some effete freak so he could make some "point". At least in films like "Female Trouble" or "Pink Flamingos" JW is reveling in a kind of trashy aesthetic which I can enjoy. The flat-liner performances were excruciating (Jennifer Jason Leigh).

At the end I felt like I had really wasted two hours of my life. Horrifying.

It saddens me to see Solondz so reviled in most of the mainstream reviews of this piece. It's as though the whole film were just a giant title card of the words "I HATE (critic's name) PERSONALLY." Well, that is not the way to take this film.

I enjoyed it because of its fable-like tone (I found the combination of score, "odd" acting styles, and actor changes to eventually create a sense of "magic" for me), but also because of the questions it raised in my mind.

1. Can there ever be a love that is not selfish? Aviva's mom's love clearly was very selfish ("Now I'll never have grandchildren!") and even the film's most loving character, Mama Sunshine -- we are shown exactly how she projects her own life history onto the children she rescues -- she's really healing herself when she heals them. Aviva's line "Pedophiles love children" seems to sum this up perfectly. Uh -- yes they do -- but---

2. How much value can be placed on human life? He roundly indicts those who put money above human life -- in Aviva's mom's speech about aborting her fetus so they could afford "In Sync tickets" and "hand-packed Ben and Jerry's pints" but it seems that the religion-based view of human life -- "every sperm is sacred" can both lead to tragedy such as the murder of the abortion doc, and is hard to partake of when you know too much about science like Mark.

All in all, if you can keep reminding yourself "it's just a movie" it can lead to a lot of thought as well as the guilty pleasure of laughing at the very messed-up characters -- but each one messed-up in a specific way so as to show a particular oddity or inconsistency of people in real life.

Todd Solondz takes us on a similar trip as on Happiness. Yet this is a much more cynical view of human nature even than Happiness. We find it difficult after a while to even have sympathy for Aviva - she becomes an empty shell of a character driven only by yearning for what is lost.

Many other reviewers have covered the storyline and the devices used, but a couple of references however which I picked up: To Night of the Hunter (Aviva's dreamlike journey downstream, ending at the house of comfort mirrors the children's escape from Preacher Harry Powell) although of course in true Todd style, this proves to be a veneer covering true evil.

The Swimmmer - the innocence of Aviva at the start, followed by the awful trip through life which leaves her thrown on life's refuse tip like the foetuses in the plastic bags Solondz' camera observes and makes no judgement, but leaves us writhing inside at the casual and unthinking cruelty of which we are capable. As Dylan says, 'every man's conscience is vile and depraved'.

However Palindromes makes us painfully aware that, just as the perverted trucker spots a defiled doll and says 'My god there's some wacko f*ckers about' we perceive that cruelty is in others only, rather than in ourselves.