Saturday Night At The Movies
No explosions
By Dennis Hartley
Moment of Zen: Zoe Kazan in The Exploding Girl
Life is what happens to you
When you’re busy making other plans
-John Lennon
(Engage geek mode) Remember that episode of the original Star Trek series where the Enterprise is taken over by “time-accelerated” aliens, who “convert” Captain Kirk into their reality? Even though he is still standing right next to his crewmates, to their perception he has vanished into thin air; his futile attempts to communicate sounds like the buzzing of insects to them. Inversely, Kirk can actually still “see” them, except they are moving and speaking in slow motion. Sometimes I feel that we have evolved into a society of time-accelerated creatures who are terrified of digesting any deep contemplation of our existence that can’t be wrapped up in a sound bite or 140 characters.
That general impatience with “stillness” also seems to have become the meme in cinema. Don’t get me wrong; as a movie fan, I can appreciate all styles of filmmaking. Flash cutting and relentless “shaky cam” panning has its place (action thrillers, for example) but on occasion, “life” simply happens before you onscreen while you’re busy waiting for the “movie” to start (to paraphrase a great English poet). And sometimes, that’s enough.
Despite its provocative title, The Exploding Girl is one such film; life simply happens for a while…and eventually, the credits roll. Writer-director Bradley Rust Gray’s minimally scripted, no-budget meditation on echo boomers going through growing pains may not be visually showy or sport a hip mumblecore soundtrack, but nails the zeitgeist of young adulthood in much truer fashion than recent films like Juno 
or (500) Days of Summer
.
The story centers around a college student named Ivy (Zoe Kazan) who comes home to New York City for summer break. Al (Mark Rendall), her best friend since childhood is also back in the neighborhood for summer vacation. Much to his chagrin, Al has discovered that his parents have rented out his room while he has been away at college, so he ends up crashing on the couch at Ivy’s family home. Ivy and Al hang out, go to the occasional party, get stoned, get up at the crack of noon-you know, the kinds of things you generally expect the college-aged to do when they’ve got some down time on their hands. Ivy spends a lot of her alone time with her cell phone glued to her ear, primarily to check in with her boyfriend (never more than a voice on the phone to us), who is spending his school break somewhere upstate. Following Zoe to a doctor’s appointment, we learn that she has to take medication for epilepsy. As long as she avoids stressful situations and stays away from alcohol, it appears to be a manageable condition. Ay, there’s the rub (and our primary dramatic conflict). What are some of the mitigating circumstances that could drive a young person headlong into to a fit of binge drinking? Yes, there are many; especially where affairs of the heart are concerned (OK-no spoilers).
As I have already inferred, the narrative is not particularly deep or complex, but there is a certain eloquence that results from the director’s decision to give each of his actors plenty of room to breathe and to let their actions (and most importantly, reactions) tell you everything you need to know about their characters. Kazan, a moon-faced pixie with beautifully expressive eyes, ostensibly carries the film (she has to-as she gets the lion’s share of available screen time). Rendall has a natural ease in front of the camera; although he might have been given a wee bit too much free reign in improvising his lines (because like, um, you know, it’s like, um, kinda like hard for me to like, um, imagine that, you know, someone would sort of like, script out this type of dialogue, you know?).
I gleaned the impression that Gray admires the films of John Cassavetes, particularly evident in some of the “guerilla-style” exterior shots, where the director appears to be nonplussed about incidental passers-by occasionally hogging the foreground while his actors continue to plough forward with the scene (albeit out of view). Although there isn’t a lot of fancy camerawork, the film is nicely shot (on high-def video, from the look of it) and excellent use is made of the NYC locales. One scene in particular, which is framed on a rooftop where Ivy and Al are watching the sun set over the city while flocks of domesticated pigeons return to their nearby roost, is quite lovely (and possibly is intended as homage to On the Waterfront
, which was directed by Kazan’s grandfather, Elia-unless I’m over-analyzing it). Or maybe it’s just simply two people decelerating time.
Previous posts with related themes:
Medicine for Melancholy
Juno
(500) Days of Summer
.
