Casting confuses ‘Palindromes’

What a variety of responses "Palindromes" invites, from titillation to irritation, with plenty of confusion and probably impatience. It interests and confounds.

"Palindromes" is jaded, highly condescending and such a mess that any credence given to its moral relativism winds up being suspect.

It's the fourth film written and directed by ultra-edgy Todd Solondz ("Happiness," "Storytelling") and a followup to his "Welcome to the Dollhouse" (1995).

"Palindromes" begins at a burial service for Dawn Wiener, the suicidal Jewish centerpiece of "Dollhouse." Her adolescent cousin, the palindrome-named Aviva, worries she'll be similarly fated.

Aviva becomes willfully pregnant by the indifferent Judah (Robert Agri). She's talked into an abortion by her mother Joyce (Ellen Barkin) and, helped by cousin Mark Wiener (Matthew Faber), a carryover character from "Dollhouse," embarks on an odyssey from her native New Jersey into the Bible Belt.

Such a structure is too elementary for Solondz, who cast eight actors in the role of the white, trim Aviva, including one heavyset black girl (Sharon Wilkins), at least one adult (Jennifer Jason Leigh), one boy (Will Denton) and five other females (Emani Sledge, Valerie Shusterov, Hannah Freiman, Rachel Corr and Shayna Levine).

The changes occur from scene to scene and sometimes switch back within one segment. Oh, and Aviva sometimes calls herself Henrietta.

You aren't getting off that easy. Agri shares with John Gemberling the role of Judah, who takes to identifying himself by the palindrome Otto.

Stephen Adly Guirgis plays three roles (Bob, Joe, Earl), one of whom is a trucker by whom Aviva is eager to become pregnant again.

Audiences who approach "Palindromes" without a clue may become more than a little bewildered by Solondz's stunt casting, which is designed to encourage a broad spectrum of responses to the misadventures of a single confused and confusing character.

But to what purpose• It's one thing to refine our perspective of a complex character as we observe him over the length of a film -- say, Tony Perkins' Norman Bates in "Psycho" or Alec Guinness' Col. Nicholson in "The Bridge on the River Kwai."

But the collective portrayal of Aviva doesn't simply vacillate; it's irreconcilable.

The film says there is no free will and that people don't change. We're all on course to behave predictably and to meet inevitable fates in a world that stinks of rapes, unwanted pregnancies, murders, child molestations and rampant hypocrisy.

By the end of "Palindromes" you develop the sort of perspective that crushed Dawn Wiener. Why anyone would want it is another matter.

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Details

Director: Todd Solondz

Stars: Ellen Barkin, Richard Masur, Debra Monk

MPAA rating: Unrated but R in nature for sex and the blunt, irreverent treatment of several adult themes

Now playing: Squirrel Hill Theater