Palindromes
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Mon 12 September 2005 // 20:00
Tue 13 September 2005 // 20:00
Wed 14 September 2005 // 20:00
(Todd Solondz / 2004 / USA / 100 Mins / Cert 15)
(Wed 14th / £2 / 8pm)
Thirteen-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 her plan is thwarted by her sensible parents. So she runs away, still determined to get pregnant one way or another, but instead finds herself lost in another world. She takes a road trip from the suburbs of New Jersey, through Ohio to the plains of Kansas and back. 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 has carved out a career depicting the nihilistic underbelly of the American dream, taking perverse pleasure in revealing a side to life rarely shown in mainstream cinema. Once again, with Palindromes, he lifts the stone of a hot topic and scrutinises with a curious objectivity the lives underneath. For the role of Aviva he takes the bold, Brechtian move of casting a different actress to play her at every stage of her journey. As well as creating a distance between the character and the audience, he also implies the variety of different lives the one character represents and lends the story a timeless, fable like quality absent from his other films.
(Wed 14th / £2 / 8pm)
Thirteen-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 her plan is thwarted by her sensible parents. So she runs away, still determined to get pregnant one way or another, but instead finds herself lost in another world. She takes a road trip from the suburbs of New Jersey, through Ohio to the plains of Kansas and back. 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 has carved out a career depicting the nihilistic underbelly of the American dream, taking perverse pleasure in revealing a side to life rarely shown in mainstream cinema. Once again, with Palindromes, he lifts the stone of a hot topic and scrutinises with a curious objectivity the lives underneath. For the role of Aviva he takes the bold, Brechtian move of casting a different actress to play her at every stage of her journey. As well as creating a distance between the character and the audience, he also implies the variety of different lives the one character represents and lends the story a timeless, fable like quality absent from his other films.