The Exploding Girl

Reviewed by J. Lunden on September 10, 2010

The film opens on Ivy (Zoe Kazan) sleeping in the back of a car on her way home to New York City for spring break. This first shot, with the reflections racing across her face, reveals the tone of Bradley Rust Gray’s The Exploding Girl. Watching the film feels very much like the thinking and dreaming we do while staring out of windows.

We learn that Ivy is a lonely, self-alienating girl who feels oppressed by her epilepsy, as well as perhaps the direction of her life. She is kind, and generous with her affections, but sorrowful and weary. She is currently in the process of losing her already distant boyfriend. And Al (Mark Rendall), her best friend since childhood, has begun speaking of college crushes. Ivy might have feelings for Al. He has probably always loved her and has always been there. They spend time playing cards in the park or seeking out Nikola Tesla’s old New York haunts. But the words in their conversations are laced with the fears and uncertainties of desiring youth, not the easy rhythms of basic friendship. We learn these things about Ivy and her life, but there are no ultimatums in Gray’s film. Nothing is put forth to be resolved, only considered. It’s simply a quiet snapshot.

Gray, who has a keen and deliberate eye for character, keeps his camera either intimately close to Ivy or observes her from a (sometimes obscured) voyeur’s distance, moving and reacting with her instead of at her. Such compositional awareness is rare in American cinema, but is absolutely essential for capturing the profound performance at the film’s center.

To watch Zoe Kazan’s (granddaughter of Elia) performance in The Exploding Girl is to fall in love. From the first frame to the last, Kazan uses every evocative tool at her disposal to impart Ivy’s self. She drops her shoulders, curves her stance, restrains her voice, and most of all seeks to break your heart with the infinite offerings of her soulful eyes. Here is an actor of great strength and remarkable beauty. She seems to make the camera sigh.

It would be easy to dismiss The Exploding Girl as just another cinéma vérité mood piece, but that would be to miss the nuances of its extraordinary delicacy and the care of its construction. This is a film that requires attention and patience, charities with which audiences have become increasingly stingy. If only for Kazan’s performance, The Exploding Girl’s 80 minutes is time worth giving.

The Exploding Girl comes to DVD in its original widescreen aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is anamorphically enhanced. The disc is dual-layered, progressive and has an average video bitrate of 8.82Mbps.

Shot on video with the miraculous Red One camera and using only natural light, this digital-to-digital transfer is very strong. While I would love for Oscilloscope to release a Blu-ray, fine detail on this standard definition transfer is excellent. Colors and skin tones appear even and natural. Black levels, though leaning towards gray, are solid and virtually free of noise. Artifacting is minimal, and I noticed no artificial sharpening or boosting. It is a very stable, clean and attractive image. In fact, it’s one of the best SD transfers I’ve seen in recent years.

The Exploding Girl is presented here with an English Dolby Digital 5.1 track at 448Kbps. A stereo track is also available.

I opted for the 5.1 track and it is a remarkably involved mix, especially considering that almost everything we hear was recorded on set and without additional refinement, foley, etc. Some of the recorded elements do sound a tad clunky, but that is more an issue of the production than a fault of the mix. Dialogue is always clear and audible (unless the filmmakers want it to be otherwise). The surround channels are primarily concerned with city ambiance such as traffic noises, but separation is generally good. There is almost no LFE and all of the music heard is in-scene.

Crafting a Character: A Walk with Zoe and Brad (13min):
Kazan and Gray are interviewed by Eric Hynes as they playfully stroll through the streets of New York. It’s a fun and insightful interview about creating the character of Ivy.

“Thursday” by Asobi Seksu (3min):
A music video.

Flutter (5min:)
A 1997 short film by director Bradley Rust Gray.

Oscilloscope Releases:
A collection of trailers for other Oscilloscope films, including the theatrical trailer for The Exploding Girl.

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