About.com Rating
To appreciate Bradley Rust Grey's melancholy film The Exploding Girl, you're going to have to love looking at rising star Zoe Kazan. You're going to have to let yourself get swept away in repeated quiet moments, extreme close ups of Zoe riding the subway, or sitting on a bed staring into space, lying in the bath or cradling a new born baby.
With her big, blue green eyes, her cherubic smile, dressed in flesh revealing hipster outfits with a hair style reminiscent of little Zuzu in It's A Wonderful Life, Kazan is something to look at.
While her prettiness is undeniable, it's also not strikingly obvious in the Scarlett Johansson bombshell sort of way. But something about Kazan makes you want to look closely and deeply, and filmmaker Grey was clever to latch on to her appeal. It's likely he wouldn't have made a successful film with any other actress.
Granddaughter of famous director Elia Kazan, Zoe began her career on the stage, making her Broadway debut in Come Back, Little Sheba (2008). She had a small but memorable role in Revolutionary Road as a naive secretary who has an affair with none other than Leonardo DiCaprio. In The Exploding Girl, Kazan has her first leading film role. She plays Ivy, a college student with epilepsy home for summer break -- -- literally wired (as the title implies) for explosions.
The plot is exceedingly simple: Ivy misses her long distance boyfriend, who is disturbingly terse during their phone calls. She's also aware of her changing feelings for her long time best friend Al (Mark Rendell) who is clearly in love with her.
Ivy handles the stress of her conflicting emotions with varying degrees of success. The camera follows her through various boroughs of New York, crossing the street, talking on her cell phone, resolute in her efforts to maintain composure.
With the aid of Kazan's remarkable face, Grey's film manages to capture the particular agony of youth: to not have your love be reciprocated, to consider loving the person right there in front of you, to determine that the party you're at actually sucks. The camera follows Kazan in what often seems like real time, doing all the ordinary day to day things young people do during an uneventful, hot summer in Brooklyn. Maybe the arc of this narrative doesn't sound enticing. The story is secondary. The film, surprisingly captivating in its depiction of the quotidian, is all about the complexities of Kazan's gaze.
In an act of pure marketing insanity, the only available still for The Exploding Girl does not focus on her vulnerable beauty.
The Exploding Girl (2009)
Cast: Zoe Kazan, Mark Rendall, Maryann UrbanoDirector: Bradley Rust Gray
Screenwriter: Bradley Rust Gray
Producer: Karin Chien, So Yong Kim, Ben Howe
Director of Photography: Eric Lin
Running Time: 1 hr. 19 min.