The Exploding Girl (2009, Bradley Rust Gray) (Patreon)

48/100

Second viewing*, no change. "I love Kazan in this," reads my tweet-review from 2011 (in which I apparently hadn't yet started using implicit first-person; today it'd start with "Love"), "but Gray's working so hard to be truthful that he crosses the line into banal." Two years later, reviewing Gray's (far superior) Jack & Diane, I described The Exploding Girl as "so diffident that [it's] in constant danger of being blown offscreen by a mild gust of wind." (Yes, the title is ironic, except insofar as it alludes to the protagonist's epilepsy.) Both opinions hold, but this time around the film played more like an unusually thoughtful and arty after-school special, predicated as it is entirely upon Ivy's ultra-tentative, frustrated relationships with—their age notwithstanding—boys. She spends 80 lackluster minutes struggling to maintain contact with her boyfriend back at college, who's clearly lost interest (a situation to which she's so implausibly oblivious as to be blindsided when he finally dumps her via phone); engaging in a standard-issue will-they-or-won't-they? dynamic with a longtime male friend; and...that's it. Didn't need semicolons. That's the entire movie. In theory, I suppose it's possible to generate riches from such skimpiness—arguably that's what Rohmer often did—but Kazan staring pensively into the middle distance doesn't cut it, even though she's more expressive in repose than most actors are delivering fiery monologues. Gray just gives her so little to work with, as if convinced that she can will a masterpiece into being via sheer open-hearted presence. Having since seen what Kazan is capable of when armed with a first-rate script (in Buster Scruggs, yes, but I also wish more people had witnessed her phenomenal work in the widely-ignored LaBute adaptation Some Girl(s)), and having also seen Jack & Diane, I'm not inclined to make allowances. There's too little there here.

* NOTE: I'm gonna be rewatching a lot of films from the past decade** that I've seen only once over the next 10 weeks, in preparation for multiple best-of-decade lists. Some will be films that I love; others, like this one, will be films that friends/peers (principally Skandies voters) think highly of, to which I want to give another chance. Unless my opinion changes pretty dramatically, or (as in this case) I didn't write much of anything at the time, they'll all be logged and rated sans comment, just because otherwise I won't have time to do anything else. Still plan to watch all the other films that I'd normally watch (and I'm way behind on 2019 releases), so I'll be seeing roughly 10-12 films per week for the rest of the year, as opposed to my usual 5-6. And I still doubt that I'll get to everything.

** Before you point out that The Exploding Girl belongs to the previous decade, be advised that the A.V. Club's forthcoming list, to which I'll be contributing a ballot, goes by year of U.S. theatrical release. This film premiered in '09 but opened in 2010.