Man. And all this time I thought my wheelhouse was just packed with homely people yelling (Tracy Morgan, Ethel Merman, me at karaoke after three anxiety gins). That's my thing! Them's my people! Right? Yes! AND WRONG (enough with the yelling). As it turns out, I am also really, really into watching cute people murmur. SELF-DISCOVERY! WOOOOOOOOOO!

Contrary to its name (on purpose, obv), The Exploding Girl is meticulously, almost obsessively, subdued: Home from college on summer break, 20-year-old Ivy (Zoe Kazan, granddaughter of controversial Turk Elia) noodles quietly around New York City, looking at something over here, calling and calling her absent boyfriend over there, and serenely absorbing the flirtations of her childhood best friend in all the moments between. But the discrepancy between title and tone is more threatening than ironic—Ivy, we learn early on, is epileptic, and stress or emotional strain can trigger her seizures. So The Exploding Girl studies Ivy as she tiptoes that line: staying calm, cooling off, rolling with the little blows and little joys that life delivers. As the stresses build, we watch and wait, wondering when she'll seize and what will set her off (it's inevitable—this is a movie, after all). The Exploding Girl is a sort of wry inverse of Crank. The suspense is tiny and electric, an inside-out thriller.

The Exploding Girl is the kind of movie that will bore many, many people to tears—its scale is magnified, bonsai-trimmed, tuned to the almost imperceptible politics of real-life attraction rather than the blunt-force trauma of cinematic melodrama. But it keeps you hooked, thanks to the effortlessly captivating Kazan—she has a face like a beautiful koala (shut up! It could be a thing!)—who is on-screen pretty much always, managing to be stylish without airs and melancholy without petulance. And thanks to the film's miniaturized emotional landscape, Ivy's push-pull flirtation with the childhood friend Al (Mark Rendall) achieves near-Austen-level heights of charged restraint. A glance, a laugh, the brush of a finger—these little moments become big. Bigger than big moments. Bigger than all the histrionics and declarations and grand gestures and Nicholas Sparkses in Hollywood's hacky, tear-stained sack.

Plus, Ivy wears cute outfits. Plus, it reminds you what youngness feels like (uncertain, exhilarating, boring, important). Plus, it's good to take a break from all the yelling. I was losing my voice, anyway.