Voy a Explotar

A sporadically stylish yet egregiously uneventful effort, Voy a Explotar follows rebellious teens Román (Juan Pablo de Santiago) and Maru (Maria Deschamps) as they hide out atop his parents’ roof and spend their days chatting, eating, and just hanging out. Filmmaker Gerardo Naranjo does a nice job of setting up the story and characters, and it’s hard to deny that the film’s opening hour is far more briskly paced and light-hearted than one might’ve expected (eg in an early scene, we see Román staging a one-man play entitled “See You in Hell,” which consists solely of his supposed suicide by hanging). By the time the two wind up on that roof, however, the film’s momentum has essentially come to a dead stop, and it becomes increasingly difficult to genuinely care about the plight of the central characters. And while de Santiago and Deschamps both establish themselves as naturalistic and charismatic performers, Naranjo’s screenplay leaves them with exceedingly little to do – which does ensure that the inevitably tragic conclusion inevitably fails to pack the kind of emotional punch that the filmmaker has clearly aimed for.

** out of ****