Movie Review- Palindromes

This is another Todd Solondz film. The last of the series of his movies I was able to get from Netflix. According to IMDB, he had to personally finance this movie as no studio would pick it up. It is sort of understandable since the film centers around a 12 or 13 year old girl who wants to have a child and has sex with several partners to make this happen. Hence there are scenes of young teens having sex and there is a scene of abortion, these are not normally topics that studio wants to touch upon. As with the other Solondz films, I really liked this one as well, but it is, again, a raw and unfiltered look at life. The film also ties in with Welcome to the Dollhouse as the family in this film are relatives of the Wiener family and the Wiener family is shown and mentioned throughout the film. The most interesting aspect of this film is that main character Aviva, is played by many different actors throughout the film. The character is always the same, the situations are the same, but the physical look of the character changes pretty often. These changes are often in ethnicity and body size. There is even a brief change of gender. After a while, these changes become just an accepted part of the character, but initially it is kind of shocking. I was going to omit this detail, but since I have seen it on the IMDB summary and the trailer that I am posting here shows it, I figured I might as well mention it as well.

Here is the trailer for this movie as I think that it does a better job of displaying this movie than I can explain.



Here is a scene that is toward the end of the film, that I really liked and really echoes something that is shown throughout the film even with the physical changes that take place.



If you liked his other films, than see this one if for no other reason that it furthers the story of the Wieners from Welcome to the Dollhouse and we find out some of what happens to them after the end of Dollhouse.