I'm Going to Explode

[Howard Schumann]

I'M GOING TO EXPLODE (Voy a Explotar)

Directed by Gerardo Naranjo, Mexico (2008), 106 minutes

Though it appears doubtful that J.D. Salinger’s classic paean to teen-age rebelliousness, “Catcher in the Rye”, will ever be filmed, Mexican director Gerardo Naranjo’s I’m Going to Explode (Voy a Explotar) provides a kindred spirit in teenage Roman, an updated cinematic expression of Holden Caulfield’s search for authenticity (though one with decidedly more reckless abandon). Naranjo, who studied film at the American Film Institute with another up and coming young director, Azazel Jacobs (Momma’s Man), owes a big debt of gratitude to the French New Wave, yet his I’m Going to Explode stands on its own as an involving tale of two lovers on the run, never feeling derivative or redundant.

Produced by actors Gabriel Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna from Y Tu Mamá También, I’m Going to Explode rises above its youthful flaws with energy, dark humor, and personal style, and an expressive spontaneity that makes it a rich and deeply moving experience. If Holden had a partner, she might have resembled 15-year-old Maru (Maria Deschamps), a troubled outsider with a rebellious spirit. Bored and feeling very much alone at her suburban prep school in Guanajuato, Maru is an outsider who empties her soul each day into her diary, aching for someone who understands her longings. Her world comes alive, however, when she meets Roman (Juan Pablo de Santiago), the disaffected son of a well-to-do right-wing politician.

A bright, impulsive, emotional, and unpredictable young man, Roman seems to delight in seeking his father’s (Daniel Gimenez Cacho) attention by getting kicked out of every school he is enrolled in. Now in the same school with Maru, they meet at a talent show in which Roman pretends to commit suicide by hanging and Maru feels an immediate camaraderie. She writes to a friend that “He exists, but I also made him up,” and says that “the best part is that he’s angry.” Roman has similar feelings for Maru and it does not take long for the two free spirits to plan a runaway from a world they can make little sense of. Roman, in melodramatic fashion, pretends to be abducting Maru while flashing one of his adored guns but the reality is less exciting.

Although they both want their parents to think they are far away, in reality they are hiding out in a tent on the roof of his father’s house, sneaking downstairs to corral the necessities of life when his dad, Maru’s mother, and sister (who have made themselves part of the rescue team), are not at home. Fortified with plenty of wine and rock music which they listen to with dual headphones, they are clearly having fun at the expense of their self-involved but legitimately frightened parents who are thrown off the trail by hysterical phone calls from Roman, replete with misinformation. In a startlingly insightful sequence, Maru expresses her conflicts about having sex with Roman, fearing that she will lose her power over him and be taken for granted if she “puts out” (why most Hollywood teens never think about that is a mystery).

Like most adolescents, one minute they express powerful emotion and seem grown up, the next minute they are squabbling or not talking because of inconsequential jolts to their ego. When Roman and Maru do have sex, it is very erotic because they are at first so hesitant and tentative, perhaps the way we all were the first time. Ultimately, they steal a car with the idea of going to Mexico City but, as in real-life, it does not always work out according to plans. Surviving an unnecessarily melodramatic and predictable ending, I’m Going to Explode is a film of sensual delight and pure exhilaration and Deschamps’ performance as the more mature protagonist keeps the film from descending into juvenile hi-jinks.

GRADE: A-

[oscar jubis]

Here's my take... I would estimate that, if I was to attach grades to the films I review, this one would merit a B, most likely a B+ actually.

I'M GONNA EXPLODE (Mexico)
Third feature by writer/director Gerardo Naranjo evidences artistic growth. Naranjo's favorably received Drama/Mex juggled multiple threads with inconsistent results. I'm Gonna Explode maintains that film's wonderfully breezy, jiggly hand-held camera style which somehow manages to remain attentive to the visual composition of the images. The new film moves the action from Acapulco to the picturesque town of Guanajuato and centers on a single narrative.

Roman, the son of a local, right-wing politico, having been expelled from yet another high school, introduces himself to his new classmates via a performance sketch in which he mocks suicide-by-hanging. He is introduced to us through the diary entries of Maru, the girl who has a special affinity with Roman and becomes his friend-cum-girlfriend. The duo run away but only as far as the roof of Roman's well-appointed home, where they pitch a tent and build a world of their own. His father organizes a search. The rebellious Roman calls the family to provide false clues as to their whereabouts so the couple can sneak into the house for food and other essentials. They leave the roof to attend a 15th birthday party in a nearby town and to visit an intellectual, leftist former college buddy of Roman's father. Throughout their adventure, Roman and Maru negotiate the sexual parameters of their budding relationship and the notion of engagement with a world that feels alien and repellent to them.

I don't know if Naranjo has seen Rebel Without a Cause but the parallels between his film and Nicholas Ray's classic abound. Naranjo obviously feels affection towards his characters and empathy towards their swagger and angst. Two highly suggestive scenes: Roman's father insists on watching a televised soccer game after he's been declared missing and his stepmother discovers their hideout but fails to alert anyone. The kids are suffering from neglect and inattention, Naranjo seems to suggest, and they're smart enough to see through the hypocrisy of the adult world. All that is fine if not quite original. Naranjo goes wrong only when introducing elements of violence into the narrative which remain, in my opinion, insufficiently motivated and somewhat gratuitous. Juan Pablo de Santiago and Maria Deschamps, in the lead roles, have no previous acting experience. Both are quite good here, with Deschamps displaying a wider performative range and great potential as an actress.

[Howard Schumann]

Here's my take... I would estimate that, if I was to attach grades to the films I review, this one would merit a B, most likely a B+ actually. I guess I liked it enough to give it an A-. I agree about the violence and mentioned the melodramatic ending that I could have done without. However, the ending was not unmotivated in my view and had almost an inevitability about it that rang true but as you say the film might have been stronger without it.

[Chris Knipp]

This, released theatrically in the US in 2009, was part of the NYFF of 2008 and I reviewed it (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?2339-New-York-Film-Festival-2008&p=20784#post20784) in the Festival Coverage section of this site then. For its originality and evocation of the Nouvelle Vague I put it in my Best Foreign list (http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1424) for 2009.

GERARDO NARANJO: I'M GONNA EXPLODE (2008)

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_kUjbjFgqZtk/SOTinEwaA_I/AAAAAAAAB-Y/KwDhyL-2rUw/s320/Explode2.jpg
MARIA DESCHAMPS,
JUAN PABLO DE SANTAIAGO

Bonnie and Clyde meet Pierrot le Fou: the Mexican nueva Nouvelle Vague is still alive

Naranja's movies, judging by this one and his previous one, Drama/Mex, which I saw a the London Film Festival, are full of sympathy for rebellions kids in his native Mexico and have an omnipresent sense of danger and the unexpected. This one, Voy a explotar, part of the New York Film Festival slate for 2008, is a romantic but playful drama of teen angst, escape, games that turn dangerous. It's a buddy picture of young lovers who rarely make love, who're indifferent yet adore each other. It's a road picture about runaways who, one of them, the smooth, dark-skinned Roman (Juan Pablo de Santiago), being of the privileged classes (his father's a successful politician, married to a second wife), never really hit the road. They escape from view while remaining at home. At Roman's home, that is, hiding out on the roof, where his father doesn't think to look for him--and where they can look down with contempt on the bizarre and silly reactions of the adults.

Maru (Maria Deschamps, more formidable than pretty) is in the same school but her mother is only a nurse. Maru is a misfit at school. "I'm gonna explode" is a line from her diary, from which she reads in voiceovers. It's how she feels sometimes. When Roman presents a "performance" piece at the school talent show entitled "I'll Meet You in Hell," in which he stages himself in a mock hanging, Maru gets it, and they bond in school detention. She's a misfit and an intellectual; he's a rebel desperate for his busy father's attention. His idea is to steal a car and run away from this small town to Mexico City. He pretends to abduct her at gunpoint, and they disappear, but instead of running away they pitch a tent on the roof of his house--where the view of the city is beautiful and they rend their private air with loud music heard through shared headphones. The inside of the tent is shot with a red filter and it's a warm place, at once womb-like and dangerous, since it is a place for scary sexual exploration: they're both virgins, or so it would appear, and are ambivalent about taking the plunge. Inside this warm space they sleep together and cuddle up under the covers, one or the other alternately out of sync by wanting to sleep late.

They sneak down for a blender, a barbecue, food, tequila, wine. Roman wants to make love but they keep putting it off, and in his willingness to do this a certain tenderness and comradeship grow up between them. Still, they get bored with their isolation and each other. Their escape is lazy yet every moment remains full of the danger of their being caught, especially when they go below, not knowing when his father will return. And there are often a lot of people down there, including relatives of both families and the police.

Eventually when they've conned his father and stepmother and entourage into going away, they sneak down into the master bedroom and make love at last, the long-awaited experience heightened by the danger or risking discovery again.

Later Roman's stepmother (Rebecca Jones, a good actress in this minor role who looks a bit like Mercedes Ruehl) climbs up and sees them making love on the roof. She keeps the secret, even though the kids' disappearance is all over the news and there's a police search on, spurred obviously by the importance of Roman's rich, right-wing father Eugenio (Daniel Gimenez Cacho)

Roman is far more fatalistic. If they could push a button and eliminate the world, she wouldn't, but he would. He has developed a penchant for firearms and wears a pistol in a holster rakishly slung over his shoulder at all times, even when they go about in casual outfits, pajamas and shorts. They strike poses and try on costumes--and hats--like a real Bonnie and Clyde. When they finally hit the road, she wears one of Roman's mother's long white dresses.

When everyone's away they hear somebody yelling from below and, lowering a plastic bucket, receive an invitation to his deputado dad to attend a gala Quince Años celebration in Santa Clara. They steal a car and go. Roman turns out to be a terrible drunkard. Later, when they'e in a field the car is seized and they flee separately in terror; they've pledged to reassemble at a certain meeting place. Things finally have an air of desperation once they're separated. It was the two of them against the world, so when one is gone, there's nothing. This is the classic absolutism of all romantic love stories from Majnoun Layla to Werther but the irony is that their relationship always remains as much accidental as it is romantic.

Back on the roof one last time after a sojourn with the one adult he trusts, a guy he calls The Professor, Roman has grown paranoid and rigged up a trap with trip wires and a loaded weapon. This backfires, and the game ends tragically.

Shown at the festivals of Venice, Toronto, and New York, I'm Gonna Explode is original in its combination of edgy rebellion and spoiled upperclass pouting. The movie was co-produced by Pablo Cruz along with Gael Garcia Bernal and Diego Luna, the pair of pals who gained international attention with Alfonso Cuaron's Y tu mama tambien; more polished now with beautiful visuals and fine acting, Naranjo's work still has the kind of raw energy and freshness we saw in the early efforts of Cuaron, Inarritu, and Del Toro--not to mention Carlos Reygadas, whom Naranjo declared in a NYFF press conference to be the greatest director working in Mexico today.

US release: 14 August 2009.

[Howard Schumann]

This, released theatrically in the US in 2009, was part of the NYFF of 2008 and I reviewed it (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?2339-New-York-Film-Festival-2008&p=20784#post20784) in the Festival Coverage section of this site then. For its originality and evocation of the Nouvelle Vague I put it in my Best Foreign list (http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1424) for 2009. . Very well said, although I don't see any "upper class pouting" here. Emotions are real whether upper, middle , or lower class and Roman felt estranged from his father and harbored deep resentments not only because he felt ignored but because of the death of his mother left a feeling of emptiness.

[oscar jubis]

I also watched the film at a festival and I am happy that it was shown theatrically in North America. Several Latin American films I get to watch at festivals and special screenings down here don't secure distribution. It's a shame. I don't quite like I'm Going to Explode as much as you guys but I appreciate your interpretations and insights.