We call them hopeful monsters

THE EXPLODING GIRL (2009)

Somewhere in the hipster-ridden vicinities of New York City, two youths are casually trying to maintain a dignified amity to no avail. The wise Harry Burns philosophized in When Harry Met Sally that “men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way," and while the “sex part” isn’t as magnified in Bradley Rust Gray’s The Exploding Girl as it may have been in that particular 1989 romantic-comedy, it’s an underlying fact that our two young focal points are avoiding the sexual escapades that will inevitably transform their prickly friendship into something far more awkward.

Yep, I believe “awkward” is the most suitable word to define this film, a film yearning to distinguish itself as character-driven to a fault, yet lacks the emotional drive to be seen as anything other than a near-vacant allegory on platonic love. The inspired tale introduces us to Ivy, a lovesick, twenty-something college student home on holiday, and her close friend Al, a shy young fellow of few words. The two eventually come to a head over the classification of their relationship, but remain remotely unexplored as characters in the process. Not without that principal edge every indie-romance seems to entail, Exploding Girl’s driving force comes in the form of Ivy’s epilepsy; as the film progresses, her “jerks” amplify, and progress it does with bouts of uncertainty, spells of alienation, and the all-too-predictable case of infidelity, aspects which may seem a bit too vague in this review, but the film opts to frame them as such.

What I did admire is how Ivy is the film’s unique, unconventional sufferer, suffering not only on the surface of cliche romantic woes, but underneath, enduring loneliness and even light disaffection from her own mother. The film just barely touches on these poignant angles, and if Gray had only scrutinized the full spectrum of Ivy’s plight, I would have appreciated his attempt a great deal more. Alas, what we have here is a faint, but linear plot that represents what we already knew about platonic relationships.

7.5/10