FILMBRATS - REVIEWS

Young Aviva wants so desperately to have a baby. That’s all she’s desired ever since she was a child herself. Although not fully grown yet, she messes around with the neighbor kid and gets knocked up. Unfortunately, her parents force her to get it aborted. In order to spite them and fulfill her fantasies, she runs away. Along the way, she encounters many different people and some strange, life-altering situations.

Writer/director Todd Solondz once again proves himself as the master of bringing the unconventional to the masses. Like his previous efforts (“Welcome to the Dollhouse,” “Happiness,” and “Storytelling”), he’s able to handle potentially delicate, controversial or taboo subject matter with a strange air of cringing acceptance. You end up laughing, not only to avoid the uncomfortable scenes weight but because the way they are presented are inherently ridiculous. The film isn’t all jokes, however. Solondz knows perfectly well how to balance the humor from key emotional moments.

That’s not the only thing he knows how to separate. In what most likely would be the film’s biggest selling point and an extension of Todd’s exploratory nature, eight different actors play the lead role. The experiment actually works, only because he limits it to one actor per segment. It’s pretty easy to get use to the changeover (even if you don’t know the gimmick beforehand) after the first or second time. Solondz selects a wide variety of people to play the thirteen year-old character, including a boy (Will Denton) and a large, adult black woman (Sharon Wilkins).

Each one successfully portrays Aviva in the same way. All of them deliver their lines with the same deliberately slow speech pattern. Each actor gives the girl a hard cover of innocence, which later cracks to reveal a rapid, yet still believable amount of jaded growth. If I have to pick one that did the best job, I’d have to say Shayna Levine embodied Aviva the most naturally, however she also got the juiciest section. Jennifer Jason Leigh is the most distracting due to her fame and surprising lack of connection to the basic structure of her role. The rest of the actors do a good job, including Matthew Faber who reprises his role as Mark Wiener to link the film with “Dollhouse.” It’s not going to be great work, but it’s campy bad, which in this satirical piece is perfect.

Aside from the gimmick (which at the end doesn’t really feel like one), the movie is quite entertaining. It’s another great dark comedy which fits right in line with Solondz’ other work. Some of the material is a little off-color and to truly enjoy the film, you’ll need either an open mind or be of a certain leftist political persuasion. Fans of Todd should eat this one right up, others may need a little seasoning to make it go down.

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