*½/****
starring Ellen Barkin, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Richard Masur
written and directed by Todd Solondz
by Bill Chambers Preceded by the snarkiest, if also funniest, on-screen dedication since The War Zone's "For my father" ("In loving memory of Dawn Wiener"–Dawn being the pre-teen heroine of Todd Solondz's breakthrough feature Welcome to the Dollhouse), Solondz's fifth film, Palindromes, is a virtual sprinkler head oscillating back and forth to spritz everything in the director's purview with venom. (It's his idea of moral ambivalence.) A "palindrome" is something that reads the same forwards and backwards, and by casting several different actresses to consecutively appear as his palindromic lead character, 12-year-old suburbanite–and victim of a botched abortion–Aviva, Solondz highlights the immutability of her hopeless mission to get pregnant. It's a canny gesture, to be sure, but it's also worth noting that the various Avivas seem to have been plugged into the film's timeline in such a way as to maximize each performer's discomfort, with a heavy-set black woman (Sharon Wilkins) materializing in the role just when it calls for a teenybopper dance number and adolescent girls (as opposed to, say, Jennifer Jason Leigh, the one celeb playing Aviva) used for the less-than-gentle sex scenes. The movie plunges irrevocably into a misanthropic abyss once Aviva takes up residence at Bible-thumping Mama Sunshine's, a halfway house for crippled children who've written their doctor his own theme song, which they perform whenever he pays a housecall. Owing a transparent debt to Tod Browning's vastly more well-intentioned Freaks (familiar campers and clotheslines surround the Sunshine home), it's the passage that goes for the biggest laughs, almost all of them aimed squarely at the disabled–this is the first time in Solondz's career that his signature political incorrectness feels like compassion envy. Solondz is apparently playing a game of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" with the critics now that Storytelling, his riposte to the accusation that he condescends to his subjects, failed to dramatically impact the conversation, and for all its temerity, Palindromes fatally lets Solondz's reputation precede it. Programme: Special Presentations
