The Exploding Girl

Kazan appears in every scene of The Exploding Girl’s perfectly paced 80 minutes, and you’d miss her if she ducked out for even a moment.

Small scale though it is, this is a film that knows what it wants to do and has thought out exactly how to go about doing it. The same must be said about the luminous nature of Kazan's performance, which won best actress last year at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Kazan has a gift for letting you see her think, even when she's perfectly still; the film's title refers to the ferocious trauma happening between Ivy's ears and her silent struggle to keep it in check.

There isn’t much to The Exploding Girl, but it’s blessedly compact, and owns its no-big-deal-ness.

The emotional detonations prove minor but movingly resonant in The Exploding Girl, an indie character study built four-square round Zoe Kazan's persuasive performance.

Both comely leads offer engaging presences, and there’s some pretty imagery, shot adequately on HD, but it’s all so slight and featherweight one viewer sneezing could blow it all offscreen.

There is no hope on the horizon for movies as leaden as The Exploding Girl.