Aviva (12) wants nothing more than to be a mother. She tries everything, until her mother (Ellen Barkin) intervenes. She runs away from home and ends up in the big bad world. A simple story by the director of Happiness with a surprising form: Aviva is played by different actresses.
The protagonist in the humorous and occasionally very painful Palindromes is 12-year-old Aviva. She is determined to be a mother and does everything she can to achieve this. When her sensible mother intervenes, Aviva runs away from home. As a wanderer, she ends up in a strange world that is itself pregnant with chances, (maternal) insights, bizarre figures and experiences. The journey of Aviva ends when it starts; eventually she returns to her parental home. While abortion (and the incompatible pro and con camps in the United States) is certainly present in the film as a subject, Solondz stresses that Palindromes is far from being an 'issue film', but above all a love story: about unrequited love, bonded love, love for yourself. One of the most ingenious interventions by Solondz in his own, intelligent screenplay is to have several different actresses playing Aviva: women of different ages, races and builds. As a result, Solondz creates a kind of `every-girl', with whom intriguing questions about character, identity and acting flow to the surface. Because whoever plays her, Aviva remains just as sympathetic. The title does not only refer to the reversible name of the protagonist, but also to the structure of the film and basically to the whole world around us. Can people really change? Don't we always remain the same, however you look at it? (SdH)