Call him ‘pro-debate’

There is simply something strange about seeing Todd Solondz in the sun-drenched environs of a Southern California beachside resort. The New York-based filmmaker, writer and director of the films “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” “Happiness” and “Storytelling” -- all set on the East Coast -- was in Los Angeles for a few days of screenings and Q&As; for his latest film, “Palindromes.”

Solondz is a chronicler of dark loners and losers, a bard of outsiders, specializing in finding a way to squeeze audience sympathy from the most outwardly unappealing of characters. “Palindromes,” which Solondz acknowledges as his most “politically charged” film to date, follows the adventures of a 13-year-old girl, Aviva, who, though desperate to have a baby, is forced to have an abortion by her mother, played by Ellen Barkin. Aviva then runs away from home and falls in with a group of antiabortion advocates. Just to keep the audience on their toes, the film’s defining conceit is that Aviva’s role is portrayed by a series of performers, including a young boy, a plus-size woman and actress Jennifer Jason Leigh.

In conversation, Solondz is surprisingly engaged, witty and articulate. There is almost none of the evasion or mumbling ambivalence one might expect from him (and which one indeed does get from a startling number of film directors), and he is keenly aware of the ways in which he is often perceived.

With his pinched features, nasal voice and oversized eyeglasses, words such as “geek” and “nerdy” have long been used to describe him. He has taken to removing his glasses during public appearances and most photographs in an effort to thwart people’s preconceived notions.

“I do think people make certain judgments about the work based on my physical appearance,” he said. “I feel comfortable with the way I dress and look, but a lot of people make certain assumptions.... I guess because I don’t talk much about me personally and it’s the work I’m happy to talk about, it’s just a sort of poking and stabbing at ‘Who is this guy?’ People want to use this as a map to try and decode me. That’s really so unimportant ultimately.”

True to form, the only time Solondz, 45, shuts down at all is when confronted with personal questions. He will allow that he grew up in New Jersey and attended Yale University, but beyond that he simply shrugs.

Despite the hot-button topics his films touch on, in particular the use of the abortion debate in “Palindromes,” Solondz declines to tip his hand one way or the other regarding his own beliefs.

“The only person who can decode what is going on in my movies is really just me,” he says. “But it’s really not relevant to anyone in the audience watching the movie. The only thing that’s relevant is the story you have there on the screen. My personal psychological history is really beside the point.”

Instead, it is the narrow space in between the two sides where Solondz likes to stake out his turf, pushing and pulling his viewers between the threshold of their own beliefs.

“I remember in the writing that I had a place I wanted to get to,” he says, “a point where this very sympathetic character, this young girl that you feel for, who has been through terrible sorrows and troubles, your heart is with her and yet there she is saying, ‘Do, it, do it, do it,’ urging someone else to do terrible things.

“It’s that kind of friction, of feeling for someone on the one hand and on the other hand this kind of moral horror at what is taking place. That excites me as a filmmaker, finding those convergences that I think throw into relief some of the complexity of what we experience.”

Admitting that the audience for his films tends to be of a “more liberal persuasion,” Solondz nevertheless bristles at the idea he is giving people what they want.

“I can’t say I’m preaching to the choir when, to follow through with the metaphor, it’s a sermon they might not want to hear. I’m not there to soothe or feed into a sense of smugness or complacency that people have about their positions. Some see this as a satirical attack on both the right and left, others see it as if I am a poster boy for the pro-life movement, and others see it as a pro-choice movie.

“When I was writing I didn’t say, ‘Ah, this is going to be my blue state, red state statement.’ ... I approached this on really the most simple level, a young girl on a quest for love.”