‘Erupcja’ review: An unexpected remix

Charli XCX delivers a strong performance in Erupcja, the latest from Pete Ohs.

It doesn’t take long before you start wondering where you’ve seen Erupcja before. Or, at the very least, pieces of it. Because the film, directed by Pete Ohs, wears its influences on its sleeve. It works because of this. While the film might otherwise be too slight, too disjointed, and ambivalent about the choices the characters make, it finds itself through its tone and the knotted seams that sew together the fabric of the story it’s trying to tell.

Written by Ohs, Charli XCX, Lena Góra, and Jeremy O’Harris, the film, at just over an hour, packs about as much narrative tension as the brief run time can manage. All while operating off a vibes-first, substance-second type of filmic architecture. There’s a plot, but it’s loose. Instead, the friction mounts at all that’s left unsaid as a romantic trip quickly goes awry.

Bethany (Charli XCX) and her boyfriend, Rob (Will Madden), have arrived in Warsaw, Poland (“Erupcja” is the Polish word for “eruption”). While Rob had first suggested Paris for their romantic getaway, Bethany picked Warsaw instead, painting a more glamorous picture than what they arrived at. All of which is a way for Bethany to evade the inevitable. Rob plans to propose to her on their trip, and she knows this. But Rob doesn’t give her the fluttering feeling of love that she desires. Being with him doesn’t feel like tectonic plates shifting, or like the world could spin out because of the force of their chemistry.

An intense “friendship” guides the plot.

Enter, Nel (Lena Góra), a childhood friend. The two share an intense history, one marked by inexplicable natural disasters that occur whenever they’re in the same place. They believe, however abstract, that this means something. They can maybe force the tides to turn if they try hard enough. And it’s through their reunion that the story’s truth intervenes, driving the plot forward with greater momentum. XCX and Góra possess immediate, striking chemistry, their gazes heavy with thoughts they aren’t voicing, lingering and hot.

From there, Erupcja descends into fleeting moments and late nights as Bethany’s relationship with Rob continues to (at least on her end) fizzle out. Bethany and Nel take to nightlife, sharing the heat and space of their bodies without ever explicitly crossing over the platonic line. But there’s something there that adds to the weight of their dynamic, a sapphic lens that offers greater depth beyond the free-for-all plunge of a woman on the verge of something she doesn’t want.

And while the film certainly plays with the larger-than-life force of their relationship through the idea of volcanoes erupting whenever they spend time together, the heart lies in the intimacy. Ohs’s film is more interested in the minutiae of long-term relationships and the appeal of what-ifs than in the broader sense of fate. It’s more about how we create our own, what we do with the supposed signs we see in the clouds and the trees, and how we find suggestions of more when we need them.

There’s no mistaking the influences in Erupcja. Good.

There’s a real sense of freedom in how Ohs directs. Guided by cinematic influences from the French New Wave, such as Celine and Julie Go Boating, to Italian classics, drawing from the enigmatic disappearance pivotal in L’Avventura (both, conversely, favorites of Charli XCX, one of the film’s many scribes), the film injects its own modern flair. This is a film made by cinema lovers. Good. We’re so inundated by films by filmmakers who seem to have only perused the depths of cinematic language (at least for major releases), which is what makes these independent ventures so intoxicating.

Erupcja isn’t without fault. For such a short film, it’s too liberal in how it meanders. But the direction and editing create a fun, club-ready energy that syncs up with the score by Isabella Summers and Charles Watson. Charli XCX serves as a strong central force as the other characters find themselves caught in her orbit. And a third-act turn rewrites how we’ve viewed the film thus far. It’s playful, refusing to take itself too seriously as it scrapes away at the artifice of escape, revealing the truths of static relationships.

The bottom line.

Thrumming with kinetic energy that buzzes with the intensity of a good bassline, Erupcja is, at times, an intoxicating journey of wayward long nights and proximity. While it loses its way and is much more interested in crafting an atmosphere to sink into rather than a story to be caught up in, director Pete Ohs never loses sight of his specific vision.

Erupcja is out now playing in limited theaters. Watch the trailer below.

Images courtesy of 1-2 Special. Read more articles by Allyson Johnson here.

Allyson Johnson

Based in New England, Allyson is co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of InBetweenDrafts. Former Editor-in-Chief at TheYoungFolks, she is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics and the Boston Online Film Critics Association. Her writing has also appeared at CambridgeDay, ThePlaylist, Pajiba, VagueVisages, RogerEbert, TheBostonGlobe, Inverse, Bustle, her Substack, and every scrap of paper within her reach.