Palindromes

As anyone familiar with his previous films like Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness will testify, Todd Solondz is on first name basis with controversy but with his latest film, Palindromes, he's curiously unsure of what his intentions or point actually is. Opening at the funeral of the central character, Dawn, from Welcome to the Dollhouse, Palindromes soon shifts to her 13-year-old cousin Aviva, a teenager who is desperate to get pregnant. Yet Solondz uses eight different actresses, of a variety of ages and ethnic backgrounds, to chart the story of this youngster as she plots her way through life with unpredictable and messy results.

Sounds confusing? Well, that's precisely what Palindromes is. Superficially Solondz appears to be taking a pop at the Christian right and moral majority, but scratch the surface of Palindromes and it's really not clear what his intentions are. Revelling in the collection of largely unpleasant characters he has assembled here, Solondz wheels through a list of taboos - child molestation, rape, abortion and murder - but with little sense of purpose and direction, other than that of base mockery. Since he's eager to dismiss any intelligent discourse in the pursuit of cheap (rather ineffective) laughs, Solondz seems, at least on the evidence of Palindromes, to have become a victim of his own heady reputation for dealing with provocative issues in an insightful light. There's nothing remotely interesting about any of his deliberations here.