The Exploding Girl

City Paper Grade: A-

by Sam Adams

[City Paper Grade: A- ]

Zoe Kazan doesn't actually explode in Bradley Rust Gray's finely cut feature, but she's always about to. She lives her life like she's cradling nitroglycerin, taking care lest too firm a jolt set her off.

Although she's a New Yorker, home in the city between years of college, she seems too fragile for its clamorous chaos. The whoosh of sirens drowns her out; passing buses threaten to wipe her off the screen. While her mumblefuck boyfriend remains a distant cell-phone presence, Kazan's Ivy strolls the city with her childhood friend and college classmate Al (Mark Rendall), whose puppyish crush somehow escapes her notice. Or perhaps it's just one issue too many, an unwanted stressor that might trigger her epilepsy, a condition that dictates a moderate, even-keeled existence of the kind utterly alien to young adulthood.

Zoe, granddaughter of Elia, has acting in her bones, which may be why her moon-faced performance seems utterly effortless; like Greenberg's Greta Gerwig (albeit with a substantially broader range), she's more fascinating the less she does. Kazan and Gray turn the momentary disconnections of modern life into understated metaphors for human disconnection. The hitch between a cell-phone call's origin and its first ring yawns like a tiny gulf. When her evasive boyfriend finally drops the hammer, she asks simply, "Why?" Her resigned tone suggests that knowing the answer would be no use.

Gray's limpid compositions draw plangent stillness from urban darkness, counterpointing but not unbalancing his actors' understated naturalism. Their words convey universes of nothingness — at one point, Al ventures, "I guess I should be more assertive, maybe" — but their hesitations are softly eloquent. Kazan's broad, translucent face has room for emotions to play out without crowding each other; she lets each minute flicker softly into place. The movie might be perfect if it ended a few seconds earlier, but it's still a rare and precious thing.