Ivy (
Zoe Kazan of
Revolutionary Road)
returns home to Brooklyn for her summer break from college. She misses
her boyfriend, and calls him frequently, but they can't quite seem to
connect. She spends a lot of time with her longtime friend, Al (
Mark Rendall of
30 Days of Night).
Al clearly has a longstanding crush on Ivy, about which he's never done
anything, probably out of some combination of fear and respect for
their friendship. His confusion is exacerbated when, due to family
circumstances, he's forced to stay with Ivy and her mother (
Maryann Urbano)
during his break from school. As the summer goes on, Ivy deals with her
epilepsy and the slow, painful dissolution of her relationship, while
Al starts to look for love in other directions.
Bradley Rust Gray wrote and directed
The Exploding Girl, while his wife,
So Yong Kim, served as a producer. Fans of
the Cure
will recognize the title as a play on their song "The Exploding Boy,"
the flip side of "In Between Days," which was the title of
Kim's directorial debut, on which
Gray served as co-writer and producer.
The Exploding Girl had its North American premiere at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival, where it was shown in the World Narrative Competition.
