TODD SOLONDZ is a genius of sorts. He has steered actors through ghastly roles, and outed taboos that warp our lives. He has not crafted a dull scene in his life. Palindromes is his latest black experiment, and it results in a thin victory of form over content.

Palindromes, as the title suggests, is a film that begins where it ends. A 12-year-old girl, Aviva (the palindrome of the title), sets her heart on becoming a mother. But her fabulously awful parents force her to abort. Aviva runs away from home on a picaresque trip where she is at the mercy of truck drivers and Jesus freaks.

What is unsettling is not the underage motel sex, nor even the crazed Christian shelter run by Debra Monk’s Mama Sunshine. It’s the fact that Aviva is confusingly played by two women, four adolescent girls, one 12-year-old boy, and a six-year-old girl. The result is that it looks like a freak show rather than a film.

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