Story Over Thought

Erupcja is not really the type of film I’d normally review—not because I didn’t enjoy it, mind you, but because there is only so much time in the world, and you have to pick and choose what you want to sit down and dedicate a few hours of brainpower to.

That sounds even worse. What I’m trying to say is that sapphic romance dramas don’t top my list of favorite subgenres, and more often than not, I wouldn’t have anything interesting to say about them. Erupcja is a little different. Off-kilter and queer in multiple ways, director Pete Ohs’ Warsaw-set love triangle is a truly strange study of relationships, fate, and the past.

I saw the film almost two months ago, but I’ll do my best to recall the plot: Charli XCX plays Bethany, a woman traveling to Poland with boyfriend Rob (Will Madden), who is set to propose. There is a hitch, of course, and it comes by way of Lena Góra’s Nel, Bethany’s childhood friend and sometimes lover, with whom she is secretly catching up. Or so it seems, at least—the romantic part is often implied but never directly shown, a curious decision that is the first tell Ohs is cooking up something a little weird.

The second being that there is, apparently, a cosmic link between the two women. To put it simply (though it’d be hard to complicate, come to think of it), every time the two meet, somewhere in the world a volcano erupts. This has repeated without fail for decades. This oddity is a clear metaphor for the passion that results from brief, fiery flings, but the refusal to really explore this thread has an interesting effect. It’s a motif so understated that I might have forgotten to bring it up had the title not reminded me. As a sentence in a logline, the idea of two women being linked by such a mystery is pure gold, but it never really feels mysterious or as alluring as it might read on paper.

I think this decision is intentional—maybe there isn’t any link at all. Volcanoes erupt all the time, just as we’ve all met someone with whom forming companionship is easy and effortless. Is this supposed connection a good enough excuse to hurt the people we love? Is Nel equally open to picking things up at the drop of a hat? Will Rob grow a pair after he’s sent to voicemail for the eighteenth time? All very important questions.

Charli XCX’s casting feels like stolen valor, because Ohs’ icy and ultra lean mumblecore squeezes all of the fun out of partying, cutting loose, or cheating on your fiancé-to-be. It’s very funny that the two stills of the two leads floating around for months show them having a whale of a time, because both are from a 30-second montage. The bulk of the film finds XCX moping around apathetically, leaving her man on read as she sighs and longs for a time that has simply disappeared. The central reunion has surprisingly little heat or charm, and there are a half-dozen references to fire burning whatever it touches.

This is clearly a story about the fear of commitment: Bethany is having second thoughts about her marriage, and the tantalizing possibilities of a life that didn’t happen are hard to forget. But it’s also a story about how the past can’t be recreated so easily without robbing others of the present. The movie permanently switches to Rob’s perspective in the third act, exploring just how totally this indecision rocks his world, a choice that I’m sure all of the Brat superfans were thrilled with. (In a film this inflammatory, why not go all the way and cast Zach Hill and MC Ride as Rob and Claude? I digress.)

By leaving the mystical thread unspooled, Nel and Bethany’s relationship never feels as meant-to-be as they might like. If I’m being generous to Ohs, one could also interpret the ample amount of deadpan narrating as some sort of comment on how actually spending time with these people makes their storied past seem uninteresting, but that one really just feels like padding out a story that was written in the moment—no pun intended. While this is a story that’s satisfyingly subversive, shooting without a script has obvious limits. The five leads have all been credited as writers on the film, since nearly all of the dialogue has been improvised. And that would be fine, except there’s no real second act, making the whole thing feel unpolished.

Still, Erupcja is just weird enough to lodge itself in your brain for a few days. Its New Wave stylings (with the aforementioned narration and color-coded transitions reminiscent of something like Le Bonheur) may hearken back to a different time, but the film’s reverence for the third wheel in these types of stories is a breath of fresh air…even if Rob is very much a wet blanket. Clocking in at a brief 71 minutes, Erupcja doesn’t explode so much as sizzle and simmer on a temperature all its own. Those looking for an affair that turns up the heat should pass. 04-21-26