USA,
2005, 100 min
Shown in 2005
CREDITS
- dir
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Todd Solondz
- prod
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Derrick Tseng, Mike S. Ryan
- scr
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Todd Solondz
- cam
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Tom Richmond
- editor
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Mollie Goldstein, Kevin Messman
- mus
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Nathan Larson
- cast
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Ellen Barkin, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Richard Masur, Debra Monk, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Sharon Wilkins
- source
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Wellspring Media, Inc, 419 Park Ave South, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10016. FAX: 212-685-2625. EMAIL: dgoldberg@wellspring.com.
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COMMENTS
Todd Solondz in person. Screening was followed by a screenplay writing seminar with Solondz in conversation with writer/director Noah Hawley (The Alibi, The Yes Men).
OTHER
Todd Solondz is a master of American Gothic. In quirky tic-producers like Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness, he raked through the compost heap of suburbia, upturning portraits of freaky individuals, lushly fertile even in their decay. For the darkly farcical Palindromes, Solondz follows a path that meanders into the mythic as if taking cues from that quintessential American oddity, Night of the Hunter. Down a hazy river floats 12-year-old Aviva (played by too many actresses to mention), haplessly in pursuit of a pregnancy that will give her a lasting plaything to love. Given shelter at Mama Sunshine’s (Debra Monk) home for the discarded, she finds herself amidst an evangelical brood of kids visited upon by every form of unfortunate affliction. Meanwhile Aviva’s certified mom, played to teary excess by Ellen Barkin, awaits the return of her seminal offspring. As a playful ploy, Aviva’s character is cast across a half-dozen actresses, from the wan and willowy Rachel Corr to the grandly gargantuan Sharon Wilkins, the sum total being a sort of American everygirl. Whether truly Gothic or just plain grotesque, Solondz’s irreverence allows him to trump taboo, making such touchy topics as child molestation and underage sex seem like the stuff of some fecund fairy tale.
—Steve Seid
FACTOID #147
The Coppola clan (Francis, Eleanor, Sofia and Roman) is the family with the most filmmakers represented at the Festival. Films screened include Apocalypse Now (1990); One from the Heart (1990); Lick the Star (1998); The Virgin Suicides (2000); CQ (2002); and On the Set of CQ (2002). (And that’s not even counting onscreen appearances by cousins Nic Cage and Jason Schwartzman.)
