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Palindromes
(2004)
Dir: Todd Solondz
Todd Solondz kind of shot himself in the foot with 1998’s Happiness. His movie about the loosely intertwined lives of a group of tragically fucked-up—but ultimately very believable—people, was cruel, compassionate, funny and disgusting. Bust most importantly, it was slick, in the sense that none of the gross-out moments felt like gags. A dog licking a young boy’s ejaculate off a railing before kissing the same boy’s mother on the mouth, came off as fluid storytelling. With Happiness, Solondz proved that the depth and vision of his previous film, Welcome to the Dollhouse, was no fluke. Unfortunately, Palindromes, like Storytelling before it, fails to reach the high-water mark set by Happiness, and ultimately wallows in that grand shadow. Despite this (and again, as is the case with Storytelling) there are still plenty of golden moments to enjoy being accosted by.
Aviva, is an awkward thirteen-year-old who wants nothing more than to get pregnant. Her liberal parents thwart her initial attempt at motherhood with a hasty abortion. This deepens Aviva’s melancholy and, unaware that an emergency hysterectomy has rendered her sterile, she sets off on a cross-country journey to get impregnated again. The saga unfolds in chapters, and in each of these chapters Aviva is played by a different actor. A pretty cool trick really. The first time we see Aviva, she is a young black girl; next, a rather dumpy white girl; in the abortion clinic, a frail redhead; and later, in a speechless interlude, she is played by a young boy, which is followed by a segment where she is portrayed by a 300+ pound black woman. This is the films strongest section, wherein Aviva is taken in by a Christian clan headed by a portly woman called, Mama Sunshine. Unlike Aviva’s own mother, Mama Sunshine abhors abortion, and has gone about assembling a family of children who are unlikely candidates for adoption: the sickly, the crippled, the albino, the dorky. They even perform as a pop group, prancing around like a low-rent N’Sync, signing the praises of Jesus. Solondz seems to relish in portraying these hyper-religious people as absolute kooks, but his hammer falls pretty evenly on both sides of the abortion issue. Aviva’s mother (a bee-stung Ellen Barkin) is a self-imposing, fanatic in her own right--she justifies her own abortion of Aviva’s would-have-been brother by noting that financially, Aviva’s Gap credit card hung in the balance.
Solondz is still full of vitriol, and his aim is still sharp, unfortunately, he is perceptible in this film. It’s almost as if you can see him wriggling around beneath its frail skin, not exactly sure he wants to be where he is. Disheartening, as his direction in previous efforts had the deft invisibility of a barracuda.
For example, a scene in which Aviva gets plugged in the anus by a truck driver is handled casually to the point that it feels like an outtake from a John Waters movie; “Can I still get pregnant if you put it there?” she asks. Like the controversial, “Say it, say, ‘fuck me nigger’”, scene from Storytelling, the moment feels designed solely to shock and perhaps disgust, not to further the, uh, storytelling. Whether or not this signals a lack of energy, creativity or integrity is certainly open to interpretation. One thing that remains steadfast, however, is the notion that Solondz doesn’t have much room in his life for bunnies, soda pop and cotton candy.
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| Click to read our interview with Todd Solondz about Palindromes. |
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