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Todd Solondz' fifth feature continues the director's cynical outlook on the modern day lower middle-class. It tells the story of Aviva, a twelve year-old girl who, perhaps intentionally, gets pregnant. Her parents, played by Ellen Barkin and Richard Masur, take her to have an abortion, and, upon recovery, Aviva takes a fable-like journey into America's heartland--or rather, the dichotomous morality struggle surrounding creation.
Solondz has, once again, created characters that the audience can remove from themselves. Sure, there are certain aspects of each to which we can relate, but, overall, the characters are so myopic and brainless that the only attachment to them is apathetic. We watch Aviva attempt to have some emotion other than desire for a child, but Solondz has already set up her character arc--Mark (whom you may remember from Welcome to the Dollhouse as Dawn Wiener's dorky brother) says to Aviva, "You know your name is a palindrome right?" "What does that mean?" asks Aviva. "It means it doesn't ever change; forward or backward its still spelled the same."
This scene essentially repeats at the end. Mark has been accused of being a pedophile, but, at Aviva's insistence, comes to her homecoming party. Mark goes on a tirade about how we are only programmed to hope or despair. The human race cannot truly rise above their genetic programming and chaotic environment--and in a Todd Solondz movie they cannot. Indeed, Aviva returns from whence she began, pregnant and hopeful at the prospect of having a child.
Solondz gives the audience both sides of the abortion issue, and, true to form, he rebukes both. The family that says that a twelve-year-old having a child will result in aberrations and birth defects is just as callous as the Jesus-loving, adopt-anything-with-a-heartbeat couple. One of the choices Solondz has made for the film is to have Aviva portrayed by seven different actresses (well, six and an androgynous boy). This choice is neither good nor bad; it just an exercise--like some I recall from film school--and, of course, there is the cinematic allusion to Buñuel's That Obscure Object of Desire. Some of the Avivas are good, some are mediocre, and Jennifer Jason Leigh is oddly compelling in her few brief moments on screen.
As the film made it into its final reel, I was beginning to see something new in it. Whereas the top-most layer of the film is a morality play, the relationship between artist and creation swims ominously close to this surface. Take, for example, Judah, the boy who impregnates Aviva. In the beginning of the film, he tells Aviva of a video he is working on. "Everyone says it's like 'Jackass,' but it isn't," he tells her. At the end of the film, Aviva asks him how the production is going. "It sucked," he says, "so I decided to give up on it rather than work on it for another two years." This is an obvious wink and nod to Solondz' own production. Also, Mark tells Aviva that he is not a pedophile. "I know you're not," she tells him; "pedophiles love children." This time, instead of poking fun at himself, Solondz gives us the reasoning behind his cynicism. He doesn't love his children, but he has them anyway.
Now you probably want to know if you should go see this movie. Chances are, if you've read this far, then, yes, you should go see this movie. Otherwise, I'd say stay at home and practice making babies. (jeremy.05.05)
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