{"id":532410,"date":"2026-04-15T15:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T15:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/532410\/"},"modified":"2026-04-15T15:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T15:32:09","slug":"erupcja-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/532410\/","title":{"rendered":"Erupcja Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Erupcja<\/a> is in limited theaters on April 17 and opens nationwide on May 1.<\/p>\n

After more than a decade in music, Charli XCX is reintroducing herself. Over the last couple years, she\u2019s established that in addition to being a dynamic musical artist, she\u2019s also quite an interesting actor. She\u2019s now appeared in multiple films, such as The Moment, Faces of Death, and the upcoming I Want Your Sex, as she explores what trajectory she wants this new stage of her career to take. Yet while all of those films utilize her to some degree and have rather uniquely engaging ideas, all pale in comparison to the film that \u2013 as it first premiered at last year\u2019s Toronto International Film Festival \u2013 is technically her debut: Erupcja. It\u2019s the least Charli XCX movie yet, with her disappearing into her role so completely that it’s often breathtaking to witness, but it’s also the one that marks her arrival as an essential voice.<\/p>\n

So what is Erupcja? It\u2019s the Polish word for eruption, and the film \u2013 true to its name \u2013 is one of great emotional explosions. At the same time, the latest from the poetic filmmaker Pete Ohs is a quiet, more free-flowing, yet no less fascinating portrait of life, love, and what can play out when this all is inevitably undone. For Ohs, who also shot and co-wrote the recent lo-fi stunner OBEX<\/a>, it\u2019s his most fully realized work yet. He brings the same deep care to his craft while finding kindred spirits in his cast, with each of them operating on just the right creative wavelength with him to make it all sing. <\/p>\n

Taking a peek into the lives of a motley trio whose paths become entangled in modern Warsaw, Poland, it\u2019s a film that could wrongly be dismissed as slight but contains within it a boundless sense of urgent and rich emotion. Indeed, much like the setting of Warsaw itself, the smaller nature of everything is a thesis statement about how even the most humble of places can contain a timeless vibrancy all its own. Though it only runs 71 minutes and covers a handful of days, it\u2019s an experience that\u2019s elevated to beautiful, more expansive heights in how it excavates greater existential resonances from what could seem to be the smallest of origins. It\u2019s in the lyrical, fractured rhythms of Ohs\u2019 film where an entire life\u2019s worth of deep meaning comes bursting out just when you least expect it. <\/p>\n

Erupcja, which Ohs wrote with his talented cast\/collaborators \u2013 Charli XCX, Lena G\u00f3ra, Will Madden, and Jeremy O. Harris \u2013 itself feels like a work of collaborative musical combustion. Remember that clip of Paul McCartney seeming to pull music out of the ether in The Beatles: Get Back<\/a>? That\u2019s what Erupcja represents for Ohs as it demonstrates in delicate, delightful detail how it\u2019s precisely his creatively free process that can make something cinematically spectacular. Working as he often does with an emphasis on providing room for discovery, with each scene less conventionally scripted than it is uncovered along the way, Erupcja centers on the slightly boring couple of Bethany (XCX) and Rob (Madden). They\u2019ve traveled to Warsaw, where Rob intends to propose after Bethany said she thought this place was even more romantic than Paris. However, as we quickly discover, the reason she holds fond memories of this place has everything to do with one person: Nel (G\u00f3ra). She has met her multiple times over the years, and each time has been swept up in a whirlwind of emotion just as a volcano has always seemed to explode. Almost immediately upon arriving, Bethany goes looking for Nel, finds her, and follows her home; meanwhile, Rob remains utterly unaware of this and finds himself wondering if he even truly knows the woman he wants to marry. <\/p>\n

Ohs has always been adept at making even the most ordinary of premises into something more quietly outstanding. \u201c<\/p>\n

This setup may seem simple, but Ohs has always been adept at making even the most ordinary of premises into something more quietly outstanding. Working once again as his own cinematographer and editor, just as he recently did on his underrated ghost story, Jethica, he shoots the hell out of every corner of the city he can. When Bethany and Nel first properly reunite in the confines of her apartment, or when they go out to party together, Ohs makes you almost wish that you could run away to Warsaw with them. It\u2019s dizzying, intoxicating filmmaking, with Ohs frequently hitting us with quick cuts to colors that he merges with bursts of music to only further sweep us up in the overwhelming joy of the duo reconnecting. Not only does this prove electrifying, but it instills the film with a beating heart that explains everything about why they\u2019re both drawn to each other and likely always will be. No matter how many decades may pass, the way Ohs shoots every moment with them \u2013 in which both performers speak volumes with their eyes alone \u2013 you can feel how they will always be linked. However, without being too cute with the film\u2019s central volcanic metaphor, it\u2019s from the ashes of one relationship that many more unexpected, if still fleeting, connections find themselves born. <\/p>\n

At the same time as he makes Warsaw into a site of grounded, graceful joys, Ohs also reveals how it’s a potentially lonely place, slowing down at key moments to observe what it’s like for Nel to close her flower shop as she\u2019s likely done thousands of times, then listen in quiet contemplation to music \u2013 or just the sounds of the bustling city \u2013 seated on a bridge. When such moments get paired with narration by Jacek Zubiel, an unnamed voice whose omniscient observations instill all these scenes with a more wry, wondrous depth, it\u2019s as though you can feel the hidden parts of the characters they can\u2019t themselves speak aloud bubbling to the surface. They\u2019re still trying to sort through their dreams and desires, with each moment of the film feeling as though it contains years of angst, just as it does an authentic sense that they may be about to go through it all again. That Ohs is able to tap into a profound existential exploration of life and then puncture it at key moments is remarkable. It\u2019s a snapshot of a life, but with vibrant details he finds alongside his cast. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

By the time the characters end up stumbling into what feels like an inevitable schism, you feel a deep connection to all of them. Even those we get to know briefly, from an artist friend (Harris) \u2013 who offers the funniest, most revealing line of the film about the destruction volcanoes cause \u2013 to another from Nel\u2019s past (played by Agata Trzebuchowska of the astounding recent Ida), all prove essential to what Ohs is exploring. Their stories make the intentionally messy, ultimately moving film one you \u2013 like the characters \u2013 can\u2019t easily shake. It\u2019s a slice-of-life film in the best way, in that it shows how each of its parts accumulate into something life-changing. It does so not with grand or clich\u00e9 proclamations, but with more gently complex, subtle ones that are all just as shattering precisely because of how authentically Ohs and his collaborators bring them to life. <\/p>\n

Even as it ultimately requires Charli XCX, the famous musician, to disappear in the process, it\u2019s more than worth it for Charli XCX, the intriguing actor, to emerge. One of her last scenes sees her reading a revealing poem, which she herself selected, and contains even greater and deceptively complex layers in her performance, ensuring this equally poetic film is as powerful, if not more so, than the many volcanic explosions in which it puts itself in cinematic conversation. Even as Warsaw, or any city, will always be a small place in the grand scheme of existence, in Ohs\u2019 film and in the minds of all those contained therein, they can each become a vibrant universe you only wish the poets of the world would spend many lifetimes writing about. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Erupcja is in limited theaters on April 17 and opens nationwide on May 1. After more than a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-532410","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-movies","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}