‘Erupcja’ Is a Sexy Mood Poem That Underscores Charli XCX’s Pivot to Hollywood From Her Brat Era

Rarely has Warsaw looked as good — or Polish sounded as sexy — as in “Erupcja,” a new film directed by Peter Ochs and starring Jeremy O. Harris, Charli XCX, Lena Góra, and Will Madden. With a run time of just over an hour and a slight sensibility, nobody will confuse this film with, say, “Citizen Kane.” Still, it is slightly more than just a vehicle for XCX, a pop star who is engineering a leap to Hollywood. Here, she plays something like her persona.XCX plays Bethany, who is traveling to Warsaw along with her nice but boring boyfriend, Rob (Mr. Madden). A marriage proposal looms, a prospect that Bethany faces with more dread than desire. Rob wanted to do the deed at Paris, but Bethany insisted they decamp to Warsaw, a city with which she enjoys a riotous history. At the center of that history is her Polish friend Nel (Ms. Góra). When the two meet, the results are literally volcanic.Hence the film’s tongue-twister of a name meaning “eruption” in Polish. The lore is that whenever Bethany and Nel meet at Warsaw, a volcano belches somewhere in the world. Call it meteorology as metaphor. Here, the latest spewing of lava keeps Bethany and Rob from returning to London as a betrothed pair. Bethany and Nel make a rave out of the reprieve, chasing the watery Warsaw dawn through warehouses and rambles along the Vistula.The movie’s press team calls “Erupjca” a “charming European postcard,” but there are moments when it reaches for something more. GQ reports that that XCX agreed to act in the film during a conversation with Mr. Ochs at the Dimes Square bar Clandestino — just before the release of XCX’s smash hit “360”. British Vogue called that “a watershed moment in pop cultural history.” The timeline suggests that XCX already had movies on her mind.Mt. Etna erupts, ‘Erupcja, 2026. Via Track Shot Media“Erupcja” investigates the intoxication of nostalgia. Bethany’s relationship to Warsaw is that of someone in their thirties reclaiming the dreams and debauches of their semester abroad. That pull — the heady history of it — can be more real than present. Bethany is kept at Warsaw by a volcano, but the city itself operates on her with the force of a black hole. Bethnay tells Nel that “ I came here because I forgot how to breathe anywhere else.”The film’s promotional material describes it as an “anti-romantic comedy,” but that isn’t quite right. Bethany doesn’t fall out of love with Rob — she is not in love with him to begin with. She falls into the warp and woof of Warsaw. It’s a city haunted by the ghetto, bombed to the studs by the Nazis and then the Allies, and then ruled with an iron fist by the Communists. It is nobody’s idea of beautiful, but it is a city possessed of a certain vitality. Bethany tells Nel that “Every time I see you, a volcano erupts. It’s not a coincidence, Nel. It’s a geological permission slip.” On the other hand, when Bethany is with Rob, the “earth doesn’t shake.” Forget about Mt. Aetna exploding — Rob is about as exciting as a blade of grass swaying in the breeze. Nothing here is earthshattering, but the movie’s techno sound track and psychedelic passages give it a kinetic, or kismetic, current.The movie’s molten core is the relationship between Nel and Bethany, which if not overtly romantic is charged and irrepressible. The question posed is if the more stable relationships adjacent to it — Bethany’s with Rob and Nel’s with a woman named Ula — can survive the tremors that ensue when the two friends reunite. The broader dynamic the film surfaces is how prosaic experiences relate to peak ones. Can a house be built on a volcano’s lip? “Erupcja” vibrates on the axis between fate and choice. It asks if certain places can suspend free will, or let it run riot. XCX is not yet an actress of the first water. Her film “The Moment,” from earlier this year, did not quite land. She is strongest here when she recites Lord Byron’s “Darkness.” Byron, Brat avant la lettre, imagines an apocalypse of frost and fear. In that bleakness, “Happy were those who dwelt within the eye / Of the volcano.”

‘Erupcja’ Is a Sexy Mood Poem That Underscores Charli XCX’s Pivot to Hollywood From Her Brat Era

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