No explosionBy John DeSando, WCBE's "It's Movie Time," "Cinema Classics," and "On the Marquee"
The Exploding Boy
------The Cure
i couldn't hear a word you said
i couldn't hear at all
you talked until your tongue fell out
and then you talked some more
i knew if i turned
i'd turn away from you
and i couldn't look back
Usually I embrace small films with a European languor, such as recently The Yellow Handkerchief with William Hurt. I am all about exploring character indirectly with scores of quiet, long takes that concentrate on the expression of the actors to relay meaning. But The Exploding Girl has so little happening, like Seinfeld without the humor, that it risks infecting the audience with the same boredom the leads have aplenty.
The song above, surely the inspiration for this film's title, captures the frustration of this audience, who would like more conversation of the kind that says something.
Ivy (Zoe Kazan) is home in Manhattan on break from college but not from the incessantly vibrating cell phone on which most of the film's drama depends. I use "drama" advisedly because the halting speech patterns of these young people probably means much more than "hey" and "like" actually transmit.
"Mundane" and "quotidian" best describe the slow, uninteresting life of this epileptic, plain young woman as she does the breakup dance by phone with her absent boyfriend and hangs out with buddy Al, who is beginning a new relationship with some advice from Ivy. Perhaps she and Al should hook up, but that might require a bit too much energy or speed up the conversation to a normal level.
The title is about the only exciting element of the film, relating obviously to the potential for seizures but just as much to the ironic lack of energy in the protagonist. As the song continues from The Exploding Boy:
"tell yourself we'll start again
tell yourself it's not the end
tell yourself it couldn't happen
not this way
not today"
I'm pretty sure nothing other than breaking up from a moribund relationship is all that will happen today of any interest.
While I love films that take their time, this one stops it flat.
John DeSando teaches film at Franklin University and co-hosts WCBE 90.5's It's Movie Time, Cinema Classics, and On the Marquee, which can be heard streaming at http://publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/ppr/index.shtml and on demand at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/arts.artsmain Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.RR.com