THE EXPLODING GIRL (Bradley Rust Gray, 2009)

date watched: April 28, 2009
location: LOEWS VII, NYC
Screened as part of the TriBeCa Film Festival in New York

Here it is, my first negative review in this blog:

Luckily, I didn't pay for this ticket, so I didn't lose anything, monetarily speaking.
And the movie was short, fortunately.
Let me just say, it truly is hard to make a movie, and impossible to make a good movie.
This guy can definitely learn a thing or two or more from his wife, whose Treeless Mountain (So Yong Kim, 2008) was beautifully crafted.

The coolest feature was Zoe Kazan's performance, not because of her acting per se, but for who she is. For those of you who don't recognize her last name, she's the granddaughter of the great Elia Kazan, director of On The Waterfront (1954) and Splendor in the Grass (1961), among other works. Her most recent appearance was in Mendes's Revolutionary Road (2008) as Maureen Grube.


This film really allowed me to contemplate the importance of the genre-character match. It's often disconcerting to have immature characters (I say immature here because these kids are college-age, and still growing up) act in a mature genre (in this case, the "serious" coming-of-age). Of course, there are films like Adventureland (Greg Mottola, 2009) that used the same cohort, yet was successful because of the careful weaving of comedy and bildungsroman genres.

Towards the later part of the film, during a scene in which Ivy (Zoe Kazan) talks with her boyfrriend on the phone, an audience member shouted, "Who the fuck cares, man. C'mon!" I dare say this was the most refreshing moment of the screening. This kind of "rupture" was badly needed by that point. It really drove home the Heineken slogan in its advertisement for TFF--"In New York, everyone's a critic." So Bravo, New York critics. And an extra Bravo for you, crude young man.