Palindromes
13-year-old girl, Aviva (the palindrome of the title), sets her heart on becoming a mother and ends up sleeping with some of the most ghastly chancers in the history of road movies. Her fabulously awful parents force her to abort and Aviva runs away from home on a picaresque road trip. Aviva is played by two women, four girls (13-14 years old), one 12-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl. The result is a fairytale in half a dozen chapters that keeps defying our expectations.
Solondz, always a close observer of human passions and frailties, an artist whose palette is one of contradictory acts: of class struggle, sexual ambiguity, everyday desires and ambitions, of hope abandoned or perversely realized. Such themes figure prominently in Solondz’s startling, poetic new film, which explores the circular nature of life, joy, suffering, and death that encompasses the human comedy.
"My advice to the audience before watching the movie: even if you're not sure you understand the what or the why of it all (and I'm not sure I do), just let yourself go." - Todd Solondz
There simply is no living filmmaker working in this theater: exploring taboo with eyes wide open, and an exemplary tenderness that lends dreams and reality an ineffable, spiritual iridescence. He is a warrior-poet of the first rank.
Telluride Film Festival
Other films in this section:
9:00 PM , Wednesday 13th April
QFT
Adult £5.00, Concession £4.00
Director: Todd Solondz
2004 USA 100 mins
Orange 2-4-1
