A 71-minute wisp of a film that moves and sounds like a cartoon wind curllicue, Pete Ohs“”Outbreak“-The polish word for” eruption “-was (clearly) shot with half an outline and scripted on the fly, to the point that all four of its main actors are credited as co-writers as well. Beauty of Being Bitten by a tick, “as its elevated mumblecore energy suits the unformed and searching nature of a Wherever you go, there are you Story of the ways people try to know the world around them in real time.
People like bethany (Charli XCXAn SLU and natural screen presence), a British girl who is convinced that a volcano explodes when she blows her life for a two -year throw with the flower shop owner Nel (Lena Góra) in Warsaw. Her puppy dog -like boyfriend Rob (Will Madden) wanted to suggest her in ParisBut when Bethany suggested that they go to Poland instead – and not even CookiesWith all her historical charm – some part of her expected the planet to crack when they got there, as if the earth itself responded to her fear of heteronormative independence.
Sure enough, Mount Etna breaks out shortly after the couple settles in their rental apartment, and Bethany takes it as a sign to slip away from his almost hubby at a party one night (what else can it be?), Ghosting Rob and his well -planned travel plan in favor of another fiery trush with Nel. Goodbye Sleepy Conversations at Guidebook-Recommended Restaurants, Hello All-Night Drug Sprees followed by Pre-Dawn Poetry Recites (sex is implied, I guess, but Ohs’ movie is too airy and etheric to show something as physically as a kiss).
Is it “Brat” to disappear from your obliged boyfriend in the middle of the journey he planned for you, and knows that you have abandoned him to miserably scrub the city for all traces of his future wife? I’m not really sure, to be honest, but sometimes a girl just has to listen to the universe, although it really is more of a self -absorbed echo chamber. Besides, it is probably never a good idea to marry someone who has been rescued in your contacts next to emoji by a guy who raises his hand – no one wants to marry emoji from a guy who raises his hand.
OHS, which recently moved to Poland itself, is fascinated by the transformative power to be in a foreign room, and by the process through which people-wise the transplants or just tourists-attempts to reconcile who they are to the new reality around them, and “Erupcja” drives along with the release of an excursion experience. Claude (Jeremy O. Harris as an extroverted American painter who meets Bethany and Rob by chance at a sushi restaurant) is probably the closest that the director has for a surrogate in this story, and at one point the camera finds him that pontifies about how “to be submerged in a culture so that I can turn my own so that I help me that I help me that I help me to make me to make me that me to make me to make me like me to turn to me to turn my own help me to turn my own.
Easy as it is, “Erupcja” crystallizes that state of a tee. And while ohs might point to “Celine and julie go boating” and “Alice in the cities” as his main sources of inspiration for this project, there’s something very “‘Lost in translation’ by way of honey sang-soo” About how bethany-subs. Of the People Buzzing Around Her – Starts to Understand Herself more legible now that she’s in Another Country Where She’s Forced Read the subtitles (figuratively for her, literally for us). For this purpose, Charli XCX’s casting adds a meta-textual wealth to the film and vice versa, because the friction between her pop star-persona and Bethany’s somnambulant every woman deepens the feeling of a woman divided between super real and letter, the spectacular and everyday life.
“Erupcja” maintains that tension by following a kind of half-height non-logic, as in the very ripped-like sequence where Bethany invisibly stems Nel halfway across the city without being noticed. The film’s non-judgmental story-read by Jacek Zubiel-comments the characters’ innermost thoughts on the road and adds to the general patina of narcissism without pointing fingers or putting the sign.
It is a (potentially liberating) narcissism that Bethany may never have allowed himself while stuck in her daily existence. Does Bethany not hear the cautious self-absorption that is baked into the Lord Byron poem that she recites directly to the camera on the floor of Nel’s apartment, or is the only place where she may ever have related to “Darkness”? Does she have to come to Poland to get an easily interpreter relationship to dream of getting stuck on board a fast train, or did she just have to get to Poland to remember it when she woke up? And is nel capable of sharing in Bethany’s selfish movement, or is the reality to be in her own home-she is regularly visited by the semi-jilted girl she meets (“Ida” star Agata Trzebuchowska)-for the basis for buying the myth that she and Bethany have told each other?
“Erupcja” is a too windy movie to finally answer such questions, but it remains despite its ease because it understands how self -centering travel can cut both roads. And for that matter, how a small attack of main character syndrome can give someone the perspective they need to save them from becoming a sub -plan in their own life.
Rating: B.
“Erupcja” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival 2025. It is currently seeking US distribution.
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