Palindromes

Palindromes is the story of a 13-year-old girl who gets pregnant, is coerced into an abortion and then falls in love with a child molester and murderer. There’s not a lot to add to that, except that the 13-year-old girl is played by eight different actresses, including a morbidly obese black teenager, a slender, red-haired waif, a young white boy and 42-year-old Jennifer Jason Leigh. It features such loving moments as a mother trying to convince her daughter to get an abortion by saying, "It’s not a baby; it’s more like a tumor." Director Todd Solondz, best known for Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness and Storytelling, ramps up the alienation in this film about identification. This movie is clearly not the result of a focus group, unless someone took the focus group results and inverted them (which seems likely). Palindromes is one of the most interesting and unlikable films of the year. See it while it’s still legal to do so!