"Eww," shuddered one of my friends at the very mention of the name, Todd Solondz. "He looks like someone who hangs around outside a playground." That's hardly fair, as Mr. Solondz seems like a thoroughly nice chap, but the remark is not atypical of Solondz-related conversations. He just gets under people's skin. And I suppose that's very much the point.

Since his grotesquely beautiful breakthrough film, Welcome To The Dollhouse, he's been probing the deepest, darkest human desires to spectacularly unsettling effect. In Happiness, a child molester drugs his son's baseball team-mate and rapes him, before sitting down for a father-son talk where he reveals that he would only ever jerk off over his offspring on account of family ties. In Storytelling, Selma Blair's Vi allows herself to be abused, with a nod to Annabel Chong, by all male takers as a means of inspiration for her creative writing.
"When you look around you, sometimes you can only despair at humanity," he tells me in a drawl that's endearingly Jewish and weedy enough to make Woody Allen sound like a Nietzschean superman. "Look at the prurient material that passes for news. We've just come to the end of 24/7 broadcasts on Terry Shiavo. That's obscenity. I suppose I'm just responding to what's around."
His latest film, the powerful and blackly humorous Palindromes, looks set to be his most contentious yet. Even some of the director's staunchest defenders have found themselves tested by his caustic treatment of abortion, not an easy topic to broach in contemporary polarised America.
"In the USA, things are very divided because we don't have a very uniting presidential figure," explains Todd. But this isn't just confined to an emblematic liberal – whois heard rationalising her own decision to terminate a pregnancy, by explaining that another baby would have left less money for N Synch tickets and quarts of Ben and Jerry's.
"I still think the mother is basically a good person," explains Todd. I think if you gave her a form, she would tick all the right boxes – anti-war, pro-choice, pro-gay rights – but life isn't like a form. And what she faces is an impossible dilemma. I mean, what do you do if your twelve year old daughter comes home and announces that she's pregnant and that she'd like to keep the baby? It's a critical moment and she doesn t handle it in an appropriate way.
Solondz's stinging portraits aren't merely in the service of grotesquery. Using the palindrome as a central metaphor and employing a host of different actresses in the role of Aviva, Palindromes illustrates the immutability of self. People always end up the same way they started out , Mark Weiner (brother of Dawn) tells Aviva, in a rant which makes one think of archaic religious notions of predestination.
"Yes, but I do think that people don't change. They get older and there are certain inevitable biological changes, but there's always some part of yourself that remains constant. There are always things about yourself that you can't escape."
Played out with savage humour and strange tenderness, Palindromes demonstrates the director's generous – some would say overly generous – capacity for recognising humanity in the most repugnant individuals while wringing grim hilarity from their foibles. "I'm glad you put it that way," laughs Todd. "Most people say I'm a cynic or a misanthrope, but that's so very reductive. The truth is I love my characters. I couldn't go through the hellish, nightmarish process of filmmaking if I didn't. Aviva, for example, is a young girl in a terrible situation. You have to feel for her, but you still think 'No, please don't' when she becomes embroiled in the plot to murder an abortionist. "I wanted that kind of tension, the experience of affection and horror. But people like certainties. They don't like laughing at material that hasn t been clearly signposted. But for me, it's difficult to separate pathos and humour. I like that kind of conflict and ambiguity. I don't do things any other way." Well, thank goodness for that.

Palindromes is released on May 6th.