Erupcja Film Review: Molten Hearts

Erupcja is a hypnotic anti-romance, with Charli XCX and Lena Góra turning 71 minutes in Warsaw into something you feel long after the credits.

Bethany (Charli XCX, of The Moment) is vacationing in Warsaw with her doting boyfriend Rob (Will Madden, of The Beta Test). He has plans. She suspects those plans involve a ring. Rather than wait for the question, Bethany bolts, reconnecting with Nel (Lena Góra), an old friend she hasn’t seen in years. What follows is a few days of wandering through lofts, clubs, and cobblestone back streets as the two women fall into a rhythm that’s equal parts intoxicating and reckless.

These aren’t especially good people, and the film knows it. Bethany ditches the man she’s lived with for a year and traveled with without a second thought. Nel deprioritizes her own recently returned ex in favor of Bethany, repeating a pattern both women perfected years ago. The difference is that Nel feels the sting of it now. Bethany doesn’t. Ohs and his cast give us people talking about nothing while saying everything, and the result is something that gets under your skin before you realize it’s happening.

Comparisons to Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, and Julie Delpy’s Before trilogy will come fast, but they sell both projects short. Where those films track a single romance across decades of conversation, Erupcja scatters its attention across a constellation of people whose orbits keep pulling them into collision. The vibe is similar. The intent is entirely its own. Góra is the revelation, carrying the emotional weight with a face that communicates volumes between lines. Charli XCX continues proving she’s a formidable screen presence, all raw instinct and irresistible charisma.

Madden, who previously collaborated with Ohs on the delightfully offbeat Jethica, brings a tenderness to Rob that sneaks up on you. Left to wander Warsaw alone after Bethany bails, he begins seeing the city for the vibrant, complicated place it actually is, rather than through the romantic lens she’d built. It’s a performance that doesn’t announce itself, and it’s better for it. Claude (Jeremy O. Harris, Tony-nominated for writing “Slave Play” on Broadway), a random connection Bethany meets that happens to be connected to Nel, occupies a less defined space, his thread feeling most born from Ohs’s improvisational process. An unseen narrator (Jacek Zubiel) fills in the emotional context, deepening connections we might not have drawn on our own.

Ohs wrote, directed, edited, shot, and produced Erupcja, finding a location first, workshopping characters with his cast, then shooting with only half the film outlined. The rest gets written on the fly, the crew living the story one scene at a time. It could have been chaos. Instead, it gives the film the warmth of a travelogue and the intimacy of eavesdropping on strangers who feel oddly familiar.

Composers Isabella Summers and Charles Watson provide a score that drifts in like another guest at the table, complementing the film’s well-curated soundtrack. Costume designer Agata Dziurgot makes every character feel like we’ve caught them on any given Tuesday. And keep an eye on the color work: the film periodically floods the screen with a single solid hue before cutting to a frame where that color hides in plain sight. Sometimes it’s obvious. Other times you have to be quick to find it.

I wasn’t expecting Erupcja to be as lovely as it was. A small cast in a big city with even bigger emotions turns out to have been exactly what Ohs needed to push the limits of what film can be when you trust your collaborators. 71 minutes flew by in a heartbeat. So well done. So very well done.

Erupcja will be released in US theaters on April 17, 2026.