Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | May 28, 2005 | | Summary | Bad Mother Puts Aviva on the Road Less Travelled. | Content
 | Palindromes is no doubt this year's most provocative indie film, because it dealt with bad parenting, teenage pregancy, abortion, inter-generation sex/romance, molestation, murder, and obesity and deformed misfits/unwanted children. It's a dark family movie, and it's also a challenging coming of age movie. It's not a conventional entertaining movie, but it certainly is an intense, confusing, gripping, and captivating experience.
Ellen Barkin plays Joyce, and she has a thirteen year old daughter named Aviva. At first, I didn't realized that the role of Aviva was played by eight different actresses throughout the film, and I was confused by the ever-changing faces of Aviva. Aviva intentionally got herself pregant by asking a friend to have sex with her, because her goal in life was to have as many babies as possible. Her mother was shocked to learn that she was pregnant, and forced her to get an abortion. It took Joyce a great deal of manipulative talks in order to persuade Aviva to go to the doctor. Ellen Barken was mesmerizing, because she had to deliver long dialogues while expressing very fake loving and caring emotions towards her daughter. Her character is absent from the film for more than half an hour since Aviva ran away after the abortion that left her unaware that she can never get pregnant again.
By the time Aviva hit the road as a hitchhiker in the Heartlands, it's already the third or forth actress playing the role. She met a born-again Christian trucker who used three names(Earl/Joe/Bob), and she willingly offered herself as sexual favors for the ride in hoping that he would get her pregnant. He's old enough to be her dad, but she thinks she was falling in love with him. She gets abandoned by him, and she headed the road and forest on her own.
When Aviva arrived Mama Sunshine's house of deformed unwanted kids, she's played by an obese Black actress named Sharon Wilkins. Her stay was welcomed by the happy faced folks, but she soon learned that she didn't belonged there for some personal reasons. Just when she was about to ran again, she was reunited with the trucker, and she has a plan for going home that needs his help.....
Most of the unknown actors are supprisingly good, making this unglamorous looking film very realistic. Ellen Barken reappeared later in the film with a great breakdown moment opposite Jennifer Jason leigh who had a mere cameo role as one of the Avivas. It was kind of misleading to see her on the poster, and I thought she was the star, so I kept on waiting for her part to show up for more than an hour. My favorite Avivas were the 'Henrietta' Aviva(Rachel Corr), 'Bob'Aviva(Shayna Levine), and 'Mama Sunshine' Aviva(Sharon Wilkins). Stepeh Adly-Guirgis who played the trucker gave a very powerful and scene stealing performance. His scene with Aviva at the cafe was a comic relief moment. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 20, 2005 | | Summary | Amazingly Hilarious! | Content
| I've been waiting a long time to see Solondz's latest and this did not disappoint!
Yes, it was sad that Dawn killed herself...but that is what she had to do to get that great speech that Mark has at KJennifer Jason Leigh-Aviva's party. People are programmed to be who they are & they can never escape that.
I thought all of the actresses portraying Aviva did a superb job. Especially the obese black woman and the chubby jewish girl with the bad perm. Ellen Barkin was also fabulous!
I know a lot of reviewers did not care for this film, but I think it is right up there with HAPINESS as one of Solondz's best.
How can you not love Mama Sunshine's kids?!? |
| Rating | | | Date | May 15, 2005 | | Summary | So weird it was good..... | Content
| This movie was a bit strange....but I did appreciate the way that Aviva was played marvelously by three seperate actresses. I also found it interesting the way in which Solondz paired up actresses with other cast members. All of the people in the film had both physical and mental imperfections, also religious fanaticism and hiprocitism is meticulously pointed out. My favorite actress of the film was the African-American version. She played Aviva very well....and seemed very believable despite her apparent age difference from the character. This was a good movie, and one should definitely be prepared for their belief system to be challenged in one way or another. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 13, 2005 | | Summary | Good acting in a movie that refuses to make any choices. | Content
| Dawn Wiener, the horribly unpopular girl from Todd Solondz's brilliant debut WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE, is dead. We find out about it in the opening minutes of PALINDROMES, which begins with footage from the character's funeral. This, in and of itself, is a bummer. Dawn has been, to date, Solondz's most layered character - though the pedophile in HAPPINESS is as interesting - and the idea that he would kill her off seems like a sad, sick joke. Of course, sad, sick jokes tend to be Solondz's forte, some better than others. Unfortunately, most of the sad, sick jokes in PALINDROMES fall flat. The film is filled with interesting quirks, but, even though the plot and the point come together at the end of the film, the movie just doesn't work.
The film centers on Aviva, a girl of around 12 who decides that she wants to have a baby "so that someone will always be around to love her." Aviva, featured in a couple sex scenes that vary between pathetic-yet-funny and creepy-and-inappropriate, manages to get pregnant.
The film then features the issues of abortion, child pregnancy, runaways, deformed children, child molestation and fundamentalism, but it doesn't tackle any of them with any sort of fervor.
Ellen Barkin does well in her scenes as Aviva's mother, who seems perfectly reasonable (at first) in her conviction that her daughter should get an abortion. But Solondz isn't comfortable with anything black-and-white, so he then gives the Barkin character a couple wholly wrong, selfish traits that make her stance on abortion a little more murky.
Barkin also acts well in her scenes opposite several of the actresses chosen to play Aviva. The film is divided into sections, with a different actress playing Aviva at each section. This is the most interesting aspect of the film, for it shows how very different actresses - and one actor - would play the same role. It also shows you whether the audience's sympathy does change and/or should change based upon the way a girl in that situation looks.
To me, Sharon Warren plays the best, most realistic Aviva in the film. Her portrayal most clearly makes Aviva into an idealistic, if naive, girl. Jennifer Jason Leigh also gets a turn at Aviva, but the scenes didn't work as well for me.
There's a very funny scene involving a fundamentalist family of adopted, deformed children in a Christian song-and-dance group, but the laughter I got from it was mixed with doubt. I mean, yes, the visual of it is ridiculous, but, if faith works for these people, then what's wrong with it?
Of course, Solondz avoids that question altogether by making the patriarch an abortionist-killing hypocrite.
No character is allowed completely pure motivations, which makes the film harder-to-take.
PALINDROMES is, of course, interesting. But Solondz has done better. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 06, 2005 | | Summary | We're All Gonna Die, So Go See this Film | Content
| I feel as though the two most interesting directors working today are Oliver Stone and Todd Solondz. Where Stone deals with the larger issues of life (wars, presidents, movements) Solondz focuses on the smaller issues (suburbia, bullying, sex). Here Solondz once again takes out his carving knives and this time he turns them on the issue of suburban abortion. After watching this hard hitting and often hilarious film my feeling is that Solondz's view of abortion is that pro-choicers aren't really for choice and pro-lifers aren't really for life. But we already kind of knew that didn't we? Pro-choicers are worried about status and money, meanwhile those pro-lifers are worried about their ticket to heaven. That doesn't make this a bad movie, but rather prevents it from being a great movie. Throughout the film Solondz tears down both sides of the debate without offering a solution. Should 15 year old girls who get knocked up by strangers be encouraged to have the baby? Should the Sunshiners close up shop on account that every belief they have isn't about preserving life? I have my opinions, but I would like to know his. The film follows Aviva as she gets pregnant, becomes unpregant, runs away, and eventually joins up with the Sunshine Club, a group of kids who have physical deformities and were taken in by a Christian family. I am very pro-choice on the abortion issue, but I will admit this film did a good job or criticizing my side of the argument. Of course when I say I'm pro-choice I mean that the girl and the father should have the final say. The parents should not have a say in the matter, and the number of GAP accounts that have been opened should have no role either. I also believe that once kids are born then they should certainly be taken care of, even if they have no eyes. I am one who subscribes to the George Carlin belief that when it comes to conservatives if you are a pre-born kid you're fine, but if you're in pre-school you are . . .well. . .screwed. Of course it is a good think what Mother Sunshine is doing for these kids by taking them in and giving them a place to live and feel welcomed. I just don't understand why it has to be saturated in this self-righteous love of Jesus that is obviously the only reason Mother Sunshine is partaking in these activities. The film is also very profound when dealing with the hypocrisies we face when in comes to life and death in this country. If I may: To kill an unborn baby is OK by law in this country, but not OK in the eyes of Christians, so their response is to kill. That killing they apparently see as OK, but the law disagrees. The law then has to step into action and their response to a killing is to. . .kill? So pretty much the law of the land should be don't kill unless you are avenging another killing. I did not feel as though the film was helped by having different actresses play the same role. I assume the idea was that despite how much we try to change our physical appearance we will always be the same person. To me it come off as more of a gimmick and took away from the raw emotions of the film. However, you have to give credit to Solondz and his actresses for their bravery in filming the sexual scenes. We learn that there is nothing less sexy than sex for the sake of pro-creation. In my review of "Hostage" I praised them for putting a chubby girl in sexual situations. This film trumps that one as the girls are chubbier and the sexual situations are much more graphic. In the end I enjoyed this movie as I have all of his other films. "Welcome to the Dollhouse" remains his masterpiece, but this film is very good in it's own right. I could have gone for some solutions as opposed to nothing but problems, but when problems are this entertaining how can I complain? ***1/2 |
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