My Special Lady and I saw the movie Palindromes last night at the Philly Film Fest. The director, Todd Solondz, was there for a Q&A after the movie. This guy also directed another oddly entertaining movie, Welcome to the Dollhouse.

So Palindromes is pretty artsy. The main character Aviva (her name’s a palindrome) is played by 8 different actresses, including a pre-teen redhead, an overweight African-American woman, and 43-year-old Jennifer Jason Leigh. Strange? Yes.

The audience asked some pretty obvious questions, but one struck me as a little antagonistic. A lady shouted, “So, what’s with your preoccupation with pedophilia?” Solondz stammered and stumbled Woody Allen style as he answered every question, but he stammered a bit more with this one. His answer was something along the lines of, “I wouldn’t say I’m preoccupied. Pedophilia, by definition, is the love of children. I’m not condoning it, but in this case, the child is the aggressor in the relationship. She just wants to be a mom, which also is a palindrome… blah blah blah, etc.”

I was thinking that the question was a little crude. This movie is about a whole lot more than pedophilia. It covers territory like abortion, Jesus freaks, deformity, mental retardation, murder, etc. The director is not obsessed with pedophilia. He’s just interested in bringing taboo topics out into the open. Pedophilia happens to be one of the many taboos in this film. Maybe that lady just wasn’t paying attention.