{"id":272511,"date":"2026-04-17T12:08:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T12:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/272511\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T12:08:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T12:08:12","slug":"erupcja-review-charli-xcx-should-definitely-continue-acting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/272511\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Erupcja’ review: Charli XCX should definitely continue acting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Film buffs understand that nearly every movie is, at heart, a travelogue \u2014 even if it occurs in your neighboring town \u2014 and that most travelogues can come across like love stories, whether anyone ends up together or not. That\u2019s the whimsical, charged appeal of the Charli XCX<\/a>-starring \u201cErupcja,\u201d a m\u00e9lange of romance, escape and disruptive coincidence in modern Warsaw from American micro-auteur Pete Ohs.<\/p>\n

If you put footage of a smoke-spewing volcano under that Polish title, you\u2019ll gather what the word means, which is exactly what Ohs does at the beginning, color-tinting his boxy frame \u201960s-arthouse-style and adding a vintage Mancini-esque track from a Polish chanteuse. All the better to seed the belief that we\u2019re about to experience something dreamy and convulsive.<\/p>\n

That said, a volcano isn\u2019t why British couple Bethany (Charli XCX) and Rob (Will Madden) have arrived in Warsaw. That rumbling you hear could also just be suitcases rolled over ancient streets. Besotted Rob\u2019s surprise plan was to propose to Bethany in Paris \u2014 as revealed to us in omnipotent voice-over (by Jacek Zubiel) that fills in the feelings and backstories of our protagonists.<\/p>\n

Bethany chose Warsaw, however, because she has a rekindling in mind, in the form of her longtime friend Nel (Lena G\u00f3ra), a florist for whom Bethany\u2019s unprompted arrival under her balcony one night \u2014 stealing away from her Airbnb with Rob \u2014 is complicated and exciting. With the news breaking that Italy\u2019s Mount Etna has just erupted, grounding planes across Europe, a mighty passion they forged as teenagers, fueled by drugs, clubbing, heart-to-hearts and poetry, has once more been unleashed. It\u2019s just their thing: Whenever Bethany and Nel connect, a volcano announces itself somewhere in the world. Woe be to the moony boyfriend or, in Nel\u2019s case, exasperated girlfriend (Agata Trzebuchowska), left behind to dust off the ash.<\/p>\n

\u201cErupcja,\u201d which Ohs also photographed and edited with impressionistic verve, unfolds as if Jacques Rivette\u2019s playful air of mystery and Roberto Rossellini\u2019s earthy melancholia had somehow come together to form a zillennial with a restless heart. Ohs makes movies with the in-the-moment creative participation of his cast \u2014 he, Charli, Madden, G\u00f3ra and playwright Jeremy O. Harris<\/a>, who portrays a friendly American artist, are the credited writers and the whole enterprise goes down like a cocktail of ruminations and swerves invented on the spot, but not haphazardly.<\/p>\n

You get the buzz (music by Charlie Watson and Isabella Summers plays a big part), the hangover, but also an aura of remedy and renewal. It\u2019s all very human, evident in the pop star\u2019s subtly frisky portrait of someone drawn to abandon (Charli should definitely continue acting), but also in Madden\u2019s unshowy, mature hurt and in how G\u00f3ra suggests the more grounded half of a self-mythologizing duo. Ohs works in evocative details: inserted frames of color, like mood flashes, or a shot of a lonely phone ringing, never getting picked up.<\/p>\n

He leaves it up to you to wonder if Bethany and Nel have ever been more than friends \u2014 \u201cIt\u2019s not Romeo and Juliet,\u201d Nel coolly declaims from her balcony upon glimpsing Bethany waiting below \u2014 but what\u2019s fun is how that\u2019s ultimately beside the point. The edgy appeal of \u201cErupcja\u201d is in the way it maps humans as molecules and electrons, fizzed by location, inspired by connection, driven to hover, fuse and release. The characters may get bounced around a bit and some will feel stranded, but you\u2019ll know you\u2019ve been taken somewhere new by this charming indie.<\/p>\n

‘Erupcja’<\/p>\n

In English and Polish, with subtitles<\/p>\n

Not rated<\/p>\n

Running time: 1 hour, 12 minutes<\/p>\n

Playing: Opens Friday, April 17 at Landmark\u2019s Nuart Theatre<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Film buffs understand that nearly every movie is, at heart, a travelogue \u2014 even if it occurs in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[75696,118168,118176,76541,118169,11131,48,52,51,118172,47,50,49,118174,4287,118171,118170,118177,54331,118175,118173],"class_list":{"0":"post-272511","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-balcony","9":"tag-bethany","10":"tag-boxy-frame","11":"tag-charli-xcx","12":"tag-erupcja","13":"tag-heart","14":"tag-la","15":"tag-la-headlines","16":"tag-la-news","17":"tag-lena-gora","18":"tag-los-angeles","19":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","20":"tag-los-angeles-news","21":"tag-modern-warsaw","22":"tag-movie","23":"tag-nel-connect","24":"tag-ohs","25":"tag-playful-air","26":"tag-rob","27":"tag-smoke-spewing-volcano","28":"tag-will-madden"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}