Mark Farnsworth is currently reviewing selected films from the London Film Festival.
The soothing sound of passing cars, the fluttering reflections of sun-kissed trees and a sleeping girl in the back seat of a car slowly pull the viewer into the sedate world of “The Exploding Girl.”
Serenity crawls across Bradley Rust Grey’s introspective tale of two college kids, Ivy and Al, who return to New York for the summer. Ivy is kooky, well-meaning and anxious about her epilepsy. Al is her best friend since forever, quiet, educated and, on the surface, in touch with his feminine side.
And that’s about it. The moping pair mooch about, play cards, go to crap parties and fill in their time until they can return to college. They share ear phones and eat lunch in the park. Ivy teaches black kids to dance and Al gets stoned with a young Pink lookalike.
It’s all very earnest and achingly middle-class. Think “Dawson’s Creek” without any of the drama, humour or even the pretentious preaching that we all know and hate. Of course, this is the point of “The Exploding Girl”: being young can suck. It can be tiresome and boring. Parties never live up to expectations and love hurts.
What the film nails exactly is the teenage relationship with the mobile phone. Ivy clings to hers like Kate Winslet to that raft in “Titanic.” She checks and double checks it, texts and leaves forlorn messages. We can picture her chickenshit boyfriend Greg squirming down the other end of her cell as he tries to man up and dump her. It’s excruciating listening as the monotone Greg bleats out excuse after excuse, not knowing what to say and ending on his failsafe line of “Miss you.” What a punk.
Still, caring Al is not much better than Greg. He comes across as a new man, but he’s just as bad in his own way. He’s crashing on Ivy’s sofa but doesn’t tidy away his duvet. At a party, he dumps her for other friends, the pain on her face glimmering through her Bambi eyes. Good old Al even asks her for advice about asking out a girl when it’s plainly obvious she’s at her lowest ebb.
Zoe Kazan’s performance is touchingly understated. You can feel the tears welling up inside as she desperately tries to keep Greg’s infidelity from becoming a reality. A scene shot through the window of a book shop makes you wish you could pick her up in her deckchair dress and out-of-date Bjork hair and just tell her what a dick her boyfriend is.
The dull reality of youth may be accurately portrayed in “The Exploding Girl,” but this doesn’t save the film. It looks beautiful, the rich greens gradually turning into twilight orange as summer draws to an end with some melancholy rooftop shots, but, like Ivy and Al’s visit, you’re glad as hell when it’s over.