Palindromes

Starring: Ellen Barkin, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Richard Masur, Debra Monk, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Sharon WilkinsWritten and Directed By: Todd SolondzWellspring Pictures Not Rated

Aviva Victor desperately wants to be a mother and, with the help of a guy named Juda, she conceives. She is thrilled—until her parents find out. Aviva is only thirteen, and her parents think the pregnancy is an accident. They rush her off to a clinic for an abortion, prompting Aviva to run away from home on an adventure that finds her falling in with a nebbishy intellectual accused of being a pedophile, a quiet trucker/assassin and a strange family of Christians. Writer/Director Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness, Storytelling) clearly seems to be saying something with this plot, which obviously involves abortion, religion and love. Aviva falls in love with the trucker she gets a lift out of town with (Stephen Adly Guirgis), who later turns out to be an assassin for the religious family she joins. He kills doctors who perform abortions, and his next hit is the doctor who gave Aviva the abortion that made her run away in the first place. So the unlikely pair head back to her home town to commit the murder. At this point, it’s clear that Solondz is saying something about the nature of love and morality and… things. Indeed, in Palindromes, things would be quite clear, but Solondz decided to do experiment with characterization. The story unfolds in a series of episodes that are clearly marked with title cards indicating the name of each. Throughout the film, the character of Aviva Victor is 13 years old. But Aviva is played by a 15 year-old, soulful redhead named Rachel Corr. And a charming, dark-haired girl named Shayna Levine, and an immensely talented, obese black woman named Sharon Wilkins. and 43 year-old Hollywood actress Jennifer Jason Leigh (Single White Female, eXistenZ) and… well . . . three other actresses. Switching between actresses to play the same role isn’t necessarily confusing in itself, and with costuming remaining consistent, clearly Solondz isn’t trying to deliberately confound the audience. With drastically different actresses playing a 13-year-old girl, it would seem that Solondz is trying to say something about the universality of human experience. Indeed, this would be a very clever and effective way of making a statement about how everybody’s the same if there was any reference to the idea at all, anywhere, over the course of the film. There isn’t. Serving no other apparent purpose, the multiple-actress aspect only chops up the emotional intensity of the film. Even though it’s obvious that they’re playing the same character, it’s hard to feel the anger Shayna Levine has for the doctor who performed an abortion on Rachel Corr. It makes logical sense, but for the audience it doesn’t really make emotional sense.  It’s a real disappointment that the emotional continuity is so jumbled, because there really are some excellent performances here. Take Ellen Barkin (The Big Easy, Mad Dog Time), for example. She plays Aviva’s mother with interesting complexity as a parent who wants to understand her daughter, but doesn’t realize she’s not paying close enough attention to her to do so. Her concern for Aviva throughout the film, shown alongside the actresses playing her, are almost enough to bring the film together. But not quite.  VS

Russ Bickerstaff is a local poet and writer. His poems can be heard regularly at Linneman's Monday Poetry Night.