Nine years after Todd Solondz’s highly acclaimed Welcome to the Dollhouse, he wrote and directed 2004’s Palindromes; a film that utilizes eight different actors of different genders, ages, and races all to portray the lead character, Aviva. The movie is broken into chapters with a different actor or actress taking the lead in each one. Most of the young actors were just starting out in 2004; Jennifer Jason Leigh, Ellen Barkin, Richard Masur, and Richard Riehle are meant to bolster the acting throughout without much success. The younger actors struggle to hold up the scenes that are missing adults.
Buy Palindromes 4K UHDPalindromes opens at the funeral for Dawn Weiner, the main character in Welcome to the Dollhouse. Times never improved much for Dawn: she went to college, got fat and covered in acne, then got pregnant during a date rape. We are told she killed herself at 20 years old. Young Aviva wakes her mom (Ellen Barkin) by crying in the middle of the night after the funeral. Aviva believes that suicide while pregnant has got to be the worst sin, for all that young Aviva dreams about is getting pregnant as soon as possible and having her own baby to love and care for.
Aviva gets pregnant very quickly, and at a young age, but her parents are able to convince her to have an abortion. The abortion goes terribly wrong: Aviva loses the baby and the ability to ever get pregnant again. Her parents, thinking they will spare her feelings, never tell Aviva she cannot have children of her own. Because of a homelife we are left to guess at, Aviva runs away from home and has several adventures. She begins sleeping with a truck driver/hitman (though Aviva doesn’t know that second part). The truck driver ditches Aviva at a motel and she ends up being rescued by a fundamentalist Christian family. The head of the family kills local abortion providers using the truck driver/hitman Aviva had been sleeping with.
There are characters with palindromes (a word or words that read the same forward and backward) for names: Aviva, Bob, Otto; however, in no way do these palindromes inform the story. One character even gives a short lecture to Aviva and the audience about how a palindrome works. In no way does this lecture enlighten the goings on in the film. While it is true that you are unlikely to have seen many films like Palindromes, having eight actors play Aviva adds nothing to the story. There are successful plays and movies where several actors play the main character or, sometimes, lesser characters. In Palindromes, the experiment does not really work. Mostly, you will be left scratching your head.
4K UHD & Blu-Ray Dual Format Limited Edition Special Features:
- 4K Restoration from the Original Negative by the Museum of Modern Art Approved by Todd Solondz
- Original 5.1. DTS-HD Master Audio
- Interview with Todd Solondz by Critic Hannah Strong
- Interview with Actor Alexander Brickel
- Video Essay by Critic Lillian Crawford
- Trailer
- Reversible Sleeve Based on Original Posters
- Limited Edition Booklet Featuring New Writing by Bence Bardos, Extracts from the Original Press Book, Plus Archival Interviews with Solondz and Composer Nathan Larson
