I first saw Bradley Rust Gray's second feature, THE EXPLODING GIRL last December at Brooklyn Academy of Music's retrospective/showcase for his and filmmaker wife, So Yong Kim's (TREELESS MOUNTAIN) handful of films. THE EXPLODING GIRL ended up in my top ten films of 2009. It remains the one film from that list which has really stuck with me into the new year.
College student, Ivy (Zoe Kazan) returns home to Brooklyn for spring break. She wanders around the streets, helps out at her mom's dance studio, has increasingly halting and awkward phone calls with her boyfriend, and hangs out with best bud, Al (Mark Rendell).
They share headphones in the park, play cards, mill about parties... Seemingly prerequisites for a young adult centered movie. Yet none of this is evocative of bitter, snarky mumblecore pictures or faux indie youth flicks.
Though its title may provoke wild imagery, THE EXPLODING GIRL is a quiet, meditative picture; one with a slightly unnerving pulse. Due to the refreshingly selfless nature of Ivy, it is a movie that is ultimately kind and gentle. One that does not have an overbearing or grandiose bone in its body. The title itself is reference to Ivy's epilepsy, and her restrained yet increasing emotional distress, and is a play on a b-side song from The Cure.
The film is composed around a young women who is beginning to traverse the outlying walls of adulthood. Of the perils and joys, along the way, brick by brick. I hate to call what Kazan does a performance, it is so natural and nuanced. Take for instance a moment during a rooftop party, where she is just sitting, looking out over the skyline. In this one moment Kazan reveals an entire lifetime; simplicities and complexities swirling about in her eyes. Uncertainties and wonder shading her face. It is so specific and astounding, yet can pass you by like anyone you might pass on the street without even giving them a second glance.
Rendall is someone who cheerfully stumbles along to stay in his friend's stride. A support, willing and brimming with nervous enthusiasm. A guy clearly in love, he just doesn't quite know it yet.
It is a testament to Gray, Kazan and Rendall then, that Ivy and Al feel like people I know, close friends even. The introspective, moody gaze of the film itself in fact reminds me very much of my friend, Mike... If one can in fact say that about a film. And it is a testament to Gray as a filmmaker, one who paints in a realistic yet somehow dreamy world, where after the movie was over I wanted to jump right up and make one of mine own.
This world that Gray and cinematographer, Eric Lin shape is as understated, yet textured and vivid as the characters they lens.
There is an immediacy and ambiguity to Ivy's surroundings; the city at times, is so clearly, rhythmically, wonderfully New York, yet for much of the time, the textures we feel and see our way through could be just about any city in the western world as pedestrians spill out onto sidewalk, after sidewalk, going about their business; traffic whizzing on by, Ivy and Al walking along, faces in the crowd.
I originally saw the film composed in the 4:3 aspect ratio. This lent to it an intimate, even suffocating atmosphere. When I saw the film a second time last week, the ratio had been opened up wider, changing some of the sense the film had carried. It was rather distracting, so if there is anyone out there reading this who was involved with the production and could shed some light on this change, I'd appreciate it.
Rounding out the nature of the film is the sparing, intelligent editing by Gray and So Yong Kim, wherein The EXPLODING GIRL begins to give off an almost horrific current of tension, which feeds into a simple hope for peace and calm.
The Brooklyn Academy of Music was right in featuring Gray, as he is clearly a rising talent in a class of his own (Take note, his next film looks to be the Lesbian Werewolf drama, JACK AND DIANE). Zoe Kazan, in her own right, is too. I called her performance here the best in an American film for 2009. A statement, which I gladly stand by.