The Exploding Girl

The title may sound like some exploitation horror filled with excessive thrills and a radioactive heroine, but “The Exploding Girl” from director Bradley Rust Gray could not be farther from that.

The film is more like a subtle reminder that there exist filmmakers who are concerned with reality as they see it, not as they want it to be. But for all its beautifully quiet and sparse dialogue, and perhaps because of it, “The Exploding Girl” is a challenging film since its observant director may have struck too close to reality.

Ivy (Zoe Kazan) is at home on spring break from college and in that time span must cope with some dramatic changes in her life, particularly concerning her relationship with best friend Al (Mark Rendall). Hollywood has been obsessed with the college or near-college years and there’s an army of films out there that claim to be some sort of definitive chronicle of the college experience. From“Animal House” to“The Graduate” to, who knows, maybe even trashy spring break reality film “The Real Cancun,” the diverse number of films just goes to show how subjective reality can be.

But what Gray achieves with “The Exploding Girl” is a level of realism so unique to the present generation that it is alarming how normal everything seems. The characters talk like they are in college, so complete with awkward pauses and modern slang that the entire film feels ad-libbed by amateurs, though closer examination proves otherwise.

Ivy is no drama queen. She doesn’t give monologues about her existential grief; there are no cat-fights or dramatic walk-outs. No race against time to win someone back and no “final stage” where she pours here soul to the world and proves herself. What is there is a slow build-up of those tiny moments that can lead to an emotional overload. It is a cinematic realization of the quote by philosopher Norman O. Brown: “Meaning is not in things, but in between them.”
Visually, these in between moments can look like nothing at all, just a fleeting part of everyday life, such as being sent to your boyfriend’s voicemail or convincing your best friend to stay behind at a party. But to the person experiencing them, they can mean the world.

Thanks to Zoe Kazan’s forceful performance, we can feel the shades of emotion that could easily go undetected, even if all we see is a patch of her face past a door frame or if she is hidden in the middle ground of the frame behind a street full of cars, as is often the case.

Gray bolsters Kazan’s performance with an expressive visual style that puts her in all sorts of awkward positions. She’s our protagonist, but we never see her face to face and people and things are constantly drifting by to block her entirely from view. If it was not for the feelings that linger after Kazan’s every word or motion, Ivy could easily have been the invisible rather than the exploding girl.

While this is a great testament to Kazan’s skill, it also brings to light some of the challenges for a viewer. The film, in fact, relies too heavily on the performance of one young actor and does not offer enough else for an audience to grab on to. There is an unnerving build up of suspense throughout the film, but it takes far too long to reach the payoff. “The Exploding Girl” is only 80 minutes long, but at least 20 of those minutes feel redundant.

And while the film is about Ivy, it really isn’t about Ivy doing anything. Her spring break is filled with card games in the park, low-key parties with old friends and strolls through bookstores. It is a very authentic sort of spring break for the under-represented college student (i.e. the ones not in “The Real Cancun”), but despite the beauty Gray lends to this realism, it takes a trooper to sit through a film where it appears as if nothing happens for a week.

But it only appears this way. What occurs is the stuff mankind has been writing poems, novels and screenplays about for all of history. It is a genuine, youthful experience of pain, love and confusion observed in a stripped-down form on film. Sure, Gray could use one last visit to the editing room, but the necessary ingredients are there and he and his cast struck upon a trickle of that filmmaking gold, real emotion.