Palindromes is a 2004 film by Todd Solondz. A loose sequel to Welcome to the Dollhouse, it follows the cousin of it's prequel's protagonist, Aviva, a sweet but rather simple-minded teenager desperate to have a baby. A series of misfortunes causes her to run away from home, carrying her through a bizarre odyssey marked by sex, religion, and death.
The film takes Solondz's love of recasting (see Happiness and Life During Wartime, and the eventual Wiener-Dog) up to eleven: Aviva is played by eight different actors of varying age, race, and gender. This unusual feature, combined with the pitch-black subject matter at hand, made the film one of Solondz's most divisive works.
For the other sequel to Welcome to the Dollhouse set in a different continuity, see Wiener-Dog, which was released in 2016.
This film provides examples of:
- An Aesop: Mark, who provided the hard truth of Welcome to the Dollhouse, here tells Aviva that You Can't Fight Fate — that people have no free will and can never change, no matter what they do to themselves. Similarly, Aviva never changes no matter what she encounters in her journey.
- Bittersweet Ending: Aviva returns home after her journey, but is still under the impression that she's going to be a mother. Her sexual encounter with Judah takes her back through all of the different Avivas until she's back right where she started as a young girl, proving Mark right that people don't change.
- Book Ends: The first Aviva we see is also the final Aviva shown onscreen.
- Chekhov's Gunman: The trucker Aviva sleeps with early in the film returns as a hitman working for the Sunshines.
- Crapsack World: You're still watching a Todd Solondz movie, aren't you? Much like her cousin, Aviva encounters a veritable parade of terrible people who never change their ways.
- Death of a Child: Bob accidentally kills Fleischer's young daughter while trying to assassinate him.
- Downer Beginning: The film opens with the funeral of Dawn Wiener. The film lays her fate on thick by letting the audience know that she gained a lot of weight, had terrible skin and hair, was unloved by her parents, and, according to Mark, only had a few moments of happiness in her entire life.
- Driven to Suicide:
- Dawn died by suicide after getting pregnant from a date rape in college. According to Missy, she didn't want to bring "another Dawn" into the world.
- Bob, aka Earl, commits suicide by cop, devoured by guilt after accidentally killing Fleischer's daughter.
- The Fundamentalist: After she runs away, Aviva stumbles upon a family of extreme Christians. At first, their antics are well-meaning, if not eccentric and downright overkill, but they become this when she learns that the father pays off assassins to murder doctors who perform abortions, and he had Aviva examined while unconscious to determine whether she was still a virgin.
- The Ghost: Missy is the only character from Welcome to the Dollhouse to not appear at all, and is only referenced in conversation. From what we can glean, she's grown up to be beautiful and popular, but is a complete Jerkass.
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Averted. Aviva desperately wants to be a mother, but since she's only thirteen when she gets pregnant, her mother all but forces her to have an abortion and tries to convince her by telling her that she herself had an abortion when Aviva was younger.
- Idealized Sex: So, so averted. Aviva sure thinks that her sexual encounters are magic, but they're all awkward, short, and uncomfortable, made doubly so by the reminder that she's just a kid. Bonus points to Solondz for not taking the lazy way to show it - there are no rapes in the film.
- Lampshade Hanging: Mark tells Aviva that people can't change no matter what they do to themselves, including ageing, altering their bodies or having a sex change, referring to the framing of the film where Aviva is played by a set of actors of varying ages, appearances and genders.
- Law of Inverse Fertility: Played with. Aviva is desperate to be a mother and gets pregnant the first time she has sex, but due to complications with her abortion, she's rendered unable to have children. Since her parents keep this from her, she spends the rest of the movie trying to get pregnant, unaware it's now impossible.
- Jerkass: Missy. She tells Aviva that Dawn was a total loser and airs all of the uncomfortable truth about her death.
- Manipulative Bitch: Missy hasn't changed at all and it's implied she lied about her own brother molesting her daughter for either attention, or because she was angry about his eulogy at Dawn's funeral.
- May–December Romance: Hardly a "romance," but Aviva fixates hard on Earl, who is old enough to be her father, or even grandfather.
- Meaningful Name: "Aviva", "Bob" (Earl's real name) and "Otto" (Judah's preferred name) are all palindromes.
- Nice Girl: Aviva is a kind, polite girl who tries to see the best in other people.
- Not Staying for Breakfast: Downplayed. After Aviva has sex with Earl, he makes a quick exit and tells her to meet her at the nearby coffee shop. When she gets there, she finds out that it's closed, and he's abandoned her.
- Pædo Hunt: Mark is accused of molesting Missy's daughter, but it's heavily implied she's just making it up for attention, considering she's a massive Jerkass. Though he's only an "alleged" pedophile, everybody avoids him except Aviva, who makes it a point to invite him to her party and determines after a conversation that he's not a pedophile — because he doesn't like kids at all.
- Parents as People: Aviva's parents screw up royally, but they do love her and try their best to help her out.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Aviva learns nothing from her journey and ends up in the exact same place as where she started.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: It is a Solondz film, after all. One of the most prominent ones is a high-spirited tune playing when Aviva and Earl are out to assassinate Dr. Fleischer.
- Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Dawn Wiener. Looks like her life couldn't improve even after high school...
- You Can't Fight Fate: Perhaps the most fatalist of all Solondz's works, the title itself is a reference to the film's message that people are essentially palindromes — the exactly same thing forwards and backwards and will never change.
