Todd Solondz is a master of American Gothic. In quirky tic-producers like Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness, he raked through the compost heap of suburbia, upturning portraits of freaky individuals, lushly fertile even in their decay. For the darkly farcical Palindromes, Solondz follows a path that meanders into the mythic as if taking cues from that quintessential American oddity, Night of the Hunter. Down a hazy river floats twelve-year-old Aviva (played by too many actresses to mention), haplessly in pursuit of a pregnancy that will give her a lasting plaything to love. Given shelter at Mama Sunshine's (Debra Monk) home for the discarded, she finds herself amidst an evangelical brood of kids visited upon by every form of unfortunate affliction. Meanwhile Aviva's certified mom, played to teary excess by Ellen Barkin, awaits the return of her seminal offspring. As a playful ploy, Aviva's character is cast across a half-dozen actresses, from the wan and willowy Rachel Corr to the grandly gargantuan Sharon Wilkins, the sum total being a sort of American everygirl. Whether truly Gothic or just plain grotesque, Solondz's irreverence allows him to trump taboo, making such touchy topics as child molestation and underage sex seem like the stuff of some fecund fairy tale.