Great Film overall

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The film tells the story of two young teenagers "defying" their parents, teachers and the rest of the world, trying to find the true meaning of their own lives.Both the boy and the girl don't get much attention at their respective homes, so they notice each other during the performance of a school play. Then, they find themselves together at detention, beginning their friendship, which leads to a plan to escape from their oppressive reality.Director Gerardo Naranjo, also screenplay writer, does a poor job trying to express the feelings of a misguided youth. The movie itself is developed at such a slow pace, that it was necessary for them to give some action to the scenes by actually shaking franticly the camera side to side, and then taking the blue of the sky, to avoid the viewers from falling sleep after the first hour.The main defect of the story is that nothing actually happens. The characters are too young, too naive and to fool to actually accomplish anything. Roman, the boy, even he is only about 15 years old, proves nothing but to be an alcoholic and a coward who runs quickly to save his own skin, leaving Maru, the girl he uses to satisfy his little macho ego, on her own after every obstacle they face during their quest.While Fernando Meirelles did a marvelous job portraying the extreme excitement and eagerness of teenagers when they do their first sexual endeavours in Cidade de Deus, Naranjo's attempt is blunt and careless.One last mistake arises when we think they story is placed in Guanajuato, medium sized but internationally known city in the arts and culture scene, while the characters' speech, thinking and accent correspond to low income areas of Mexico City - Naranjo is not able to detach his own background from the screenplay and the result is the story is out of context.Photography and music were more promising, but by themselves can't keep the film afloat.

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.

In this case, what starts out as an interesting "outsider boy meets outsider girl and their inner selves bond" premise slowly gets lost as it repeatedly diverts from their story into trivia and returns to the "pair bonding story" before it finally concludes without a real resolution. leaving you wondering "and what happened THEN?"There is semi-nudity and sexual activity, large dollops of "language" scattered throughout it, but the promise of the premise is washed out and lost before the ending, making the story ring hollow, neither fish nor fowl when the credits roll.Most of the viewing audience liked it, they just could not fathom why it didn't "really" come to a conclusion of some kind.

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 voice-overs. 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 upper-class 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 Cuarón's 'Y tu mamá también'; 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 Cuarón, Iñárritu, and Del Toro--not to mention Carlos Reygadas, whom Naranjo declared in his 2008 NYFF press conference to be the greatest director working in Mexico today.