Fractured and kinetic in its off-kilter rhythms, Pete Ohs’s “Erupcja” is a wistful examination of a sapphic romance set in Warsaw, Poland. Told in 71 minutes, the breezy melodrama moves through reality and happenstance with a winking glee that recalls the gentle works of Bill Forsyth—albeit with less thematic heft. Here, Charli XCX is Bethany, an Englishwoman who arrives in Warsaw with her boyfriend, Rob (Will Madden), only to rekindle a relationship with her former flame, Nel (Lena Góra). Bethany and Nel’s reunion, in their mind, is a cosmic one: Every time they see each other, a volcano somewhere in the world erupts.
The film opens with one such explosion, that of Mount Etna in Italy, which grounds Bethany and Rob’s return flight to London for days longer than either expected. The camera then transitions to a bird’s eye view of bikers criss-crossing the sidewalk before alternating to a mounted perspective on top of Bethany’s roller bag. Often the camera captures these mundane occurrences from far away for an evocative type of omniscience. That all-knowing approach is furthered by a wry narrator (Jacek Zubiel), who frankly imparts the backstory of each character.
While the film’s formal modulations aren’t nearly as beguiling as it would have viewers believe, particularly in an austere story that can play as flat when we’re away from Bethany’s unyielding perspective, Ohs’s playful sense of ambiguity does hold one’s interest.
Are Bethany and Nel really magically linked? Ohs knows the answer to that question begs for little in return. Instead, he allows us to explore how believing in fate can undermine the present. Because Bethany and Nel accept the cosmic importance of their relationship as fact, they allow for their current partnerships to self-destruct. Rob, for instance, traveled to Warsaw with Bethany to propose to her. But the closer Bethany spins toward Nel’s orbit—by partying at clubs and bars with her—the more she drifts away from Rob. Nel similarly forgoes a date with her girlfriend Ula (Agata Trzebuchowska) to see Bethany again. She is so wrapped in Bethany’s spell that we do not forget Ula exists. Nel also subtly erases Ula from her mind, too. Both Bethany and Nel are insecure about their potential domesticity, imbuing the film with a restless quality that grates against its economical writing.
Ohs further stimulates the role of fate in his film via his vivid use of sound. Pre-lap sound rolls us into scenes often separated by blank cards whose mix of fuchsia and royal blue shades, when paired with Isabella Summers and Charles Watson’s mystical score, imbues this work with brief glimpses of aesthetic magic that support the film’s intense dream logic.
It’s also worth noting that the script is the result of the combined effort of Ohs and his cast: Charli XCX, Lena Góra, Will Madden, and Jeremy O. Harris (the latter plays the American expat artist Claude). That collaborativeness can be felt in the unvarnished approach to the film’s contemplative dialogue, which includes a couple of recitations of Lord Byron’s apocalyptic poem “Darkness.” The richness of said partnership, however, doesn’t always translate into rich characters. Charli XCX’s Bethany teases greater complexity as a self-defeating take on the singer’s party girl reputation. But the film steps back from acutely intertwining the singer’s persona with her character before she can fully become interesting. Instead, it perplexingly shifts toward Rob’s safe perspective.
And yet, one can’t deny that “Erupcja” possesses a kind of indescribable charm. This is a lo-fi odyssey across Warsaw that fully integrates its grungy surroundings into vivid images of forlorn lovers navigating clumsily toward and away from one another. Meaning that spontaneity commands this film. At one point, Bethany observes that Rob is boring. When Ohs leans away from gentle characterizations toward a mordant view of the universe, he approaches a kind of cinematic explosion that fittingly centers the fragility of infatuation.
