Palindromes

12-year-old Aviva Victor wants to be a mom. She does all she can to make this happen, and comes very close to succeeding, but in the end is thwarted by her sensible parents. So she runs away, still determined to get pregnant one way or another. Instead, she finds herself lost in another world, a less sensible one, perhaps, but one pregnant itself with all sorts of strange possibilities. Like so many trips, this one is round-trip, and it’s hard to say in the end if she can ever be quite the same again, or if she can ever be anything but the same again. Todd Solondz about his movie: «When you create a sympathetic character it’s only natural that your audience will want to identify with him/her. Nobody actually wants to relate to someone who is unsympathetic, because few people see themselves in this light. The curious thing is how sex, age, race, etc. play so limited a part in determining the degree to which a character is sympathetic. Perhaps this is why a sympathetic character is one that all types of people can relate to. When I made Welcome to the Dollhouse, all sorts of people would say: “That was me! I was just like that!” (And Dawn Wiener was not even an entirely sympathetic character!) (Needless to say, I heard nobody make the same claim about Bill Maplewood, the paedophile psychiatrist in Happiness, a character whom so many seemed to find “sympathetic”.) So I wondered what would happen if I cast a number of different types of people as one character, a character who is wholly sympathetic. My fear was that it would come across as too much of an intellectual exercise, a show-offy but pointless trick, and alienate the audience. But my hope was that there would be a cumulative effect that would be more emotionally affecting than had there been just one actor: more magic, and less sleight of hand. My story is a sad one, though not without a certain kick of humour. People may wonder: “What does this say about the nature of character? or personality? or acting? or identity?” My advice to the audience before watching the movie: even if you’re not sure you understand the what or why of it all (and I’m not sure I do), just let yourself go...» -Todd Solondz-