Love is a contradiction. Despite being a universal experience if we consider the various kinds of love – romantic, familial, platonic and everything else in between – it is still often very difficult to define precisely. This hasn’t stopped countless individuals in every conceivable field of study from trying their best to understand what it is that makes love so mysterious and vital to our survival. Artists in particular are at the forefront of this movement, since there has always been an attempt to understand exactly what it means to be in love from a creative perspective, especially since love tends to be quite malleable and easily adaptable to so many contexts. In the case of the present discussion, we have Erupcja, the most recent directorial outing by Pete Ohs, an experimental filmmaker who has been steadily working as one of the most interesting voices in contemporary independent cinema for the better part of a decade, dissecting the human condition in all of its various forms. This film is set in Warsaw, and follows intersecting stories of two couples: Bethany and Rob are visiting from London, coming on vacation at her insistence that they visit her family’s hometown for reasons that are entirely unknown to her boyfriend, who remains supportive. Nel is a young florist who runs a store in the city and has been quietly pining for Ula, her best friend and confidante, who is entirely unaware that she is the object of her affections. Bethany and Nel are revealed to also have a history together, which makes her reasons for choosing this city (rather than somewhere more traditionally romantic, such as Paris, as suggested by Rob) all the more obvious. Over the course of a few days, the characters interweave themselves in each other’s lives, proving that it is not difficult to leave a lasting impression, especially when the subject of desire becomes all the more prominent. A simple film that contains some enormous ideas (some so intimidating that they seem unable to meaningfully fit into the very small, intimate scope of the story) while also being an exceptionally creative artistic experiment, Erupcja is quite an achievement, even at its most opaque and impenetrable, which seems to be entirely by design.

Erupcja is far from the first film to address the tricky nature of love, and it’s certainly not going to be the last. The specific ideas that Ohs was intent on exploring are a lot more complex than a lot of people may imagine, with the quietly complex insights into the challenges of staying in a relationship once the spark has been extinguished being the anchor for the entire story. It’s not a massively expansive topic, and rather one that is a lot more targeted and direct, cutting to the bone of the concept without needing to rely too heavily on complex ideas to deliver its core message. The foundation of what Ohs intends to examine is how there is a clear difference between the comfort of finding someone with whom you get along well enough to lead a relatively happy life, even if it isn’t all that exciting, and the raw desire that comes when remembering someone with whom you truly felt that genuine connection; it can become immensely complicated. The primary motivation of this film is to portray characters who are not unhappy, but rather tragically bored – both Bethany and Nel live comfortable lives, enough that they can’t feasibly portray themselves as victims, but rather vessels through which some of life’s more challenging quandaries tend to flow. Ohs examines queerness in a very interesting way – neither of the two explicitly label themselves (the lack of precise terminology seems to be a purposeful decision), but it is quite obvious that they consider each other their soulmate, even if their relationship has become slightly tense after they chose to pursue their own lives, or rather Bethany chose to lead a more conventional existence, leaving Nel to be plunged into a state of perpetual yearning. It’s a fascinating approach that highlights the often intangible concept of love, separating it from romance and focusing instead on the raw, visceral elements that often tend to be overlooked in more orthodox depictions of the feeling of being in love.

In addition to the narrative quandaries embedded at the heart of the film, Erupcja also asks several formal questions that relate to the execution of its core ideas, gradually and methodically becoming quite an interesting piece of work, even if it isn’t always successful in how it delivers many of its themes. The foundational question being asked is whether there is any such thing as a truly communal film – while he was designated as the director, it is clear that Ohs is only one voice out of many when it came to developing this film, with almost the entire cast being credited as co-writers along with him, indicating that their input was not only invaluable to the production, but also entirely necessary. The straightforward nature of the story means that there is a lot of room to experiment with style – and in the case of this film, we have the director choosing to employ a stream-of-consciousness approach, where the characters weave in and out of the story at will – there’s a core quartet of performances, but each one of them is a decentralised from the story enough that they can leave the narrative without it feeling like the focus is shifting away unnecessarily. The film can sometimes feel quite aloof and distant, which is part of the approach taken by the director and his cohorts – this is not the warm, swooning story of long-lost love that a more conventional director may fixate on, but rather a thornier, more scathing indictment on how so many people feel compelled to enter into passionless relationships as social obligation, losing sight of themselves in the process and, in the case of Bethany and Nel, foregoing what evidently would’ve been far more meaningful relationships that were sadly diminished by their own individual pursuits of something resembling the status quo. Its cold, cutting tone is intentional, since it makes it quite clear what the aims of this story are, and how it carefully unravels into something so much more engaging as a result of never pursuing the most obvious approach.

The director manages to assemble quite an impressive cast of collaborators, drawing from different fields, which gives the film an added sense of complexity and authenticity. The only professional actor of the five key roles is Lena Góra (who is unsurprisingly the heart of the film), playing Nel as a young woman trying to navigate her own existential quandaries while also trying to not portray her insecurities to the outside world. It’s a quiet but steady performance in which so much is communicated non-verbally, with her movements, expressions and subtle ability to emote even the smallest of ideas being absolutely remarkable. From outside the world of acting, we have singer Charli XCX as the other lead, playing Bethany as a flighty young woman who sees life as being far less serious, but as a result discovers that her own internal insecurities only begin to compound and become more intimidating as she attempts to make sense of the world that surrounds her. Considering she is not a trained actor, but rather trying to make her mark in the industry (which she evidently adores enough to take on these challenging parts), Charli XCX does manage to deliver quite a strong performance, albeit one that is still lacking in the depth that a professionally-trained performer would’ve been able to present, but which she will very clearly begin to develop as she acts more frequently. Screenwriter Agata Trzebuchowska plays Ula, and playwright Jeremy O. Harris enters the film midway through as Claude, the painter who acts as the catalyst for a decisive moment between Bethany and Nel, kickstarting the third act in terms of establishing the key motivations and introducing the increased level of tension. It’s a strong cast, and considering how much of it was written in collaboration with the actors, it is clear that Ohs had nothing but complete trust in his actors to deliver stellar, complex work that underlines the more ambiguous aspects of this already quite unconventional film.

Ultimately, we find that Erupcja is a film where love remains completely unknowable, which is how it manages to succeed, since it resists offering the easy solutions and instead focuses on embracing the core uncertainty that drives these ideas. The film argues that heartbreak is not the most harrowing aspect of falling out of love – in fact, it posits that this isn’t ultimately all that important, since the devastation of a relationship ending can be healed with time – but rather that choosing comfort and stability can be appealing, but at the expense of pursuing your heart’s true desires, with settling for an ordinary life being perceived as a far bigger tragedy since it betrays what someone truly wants. The director’s experimental style mirrors the subject matter, with the focus on shards of an intentionally fragmented narrative intercutting with the elusive tone that may seem difficult at a distance, but which forces the audience into a position where we are experiencing the ambiguity of love rather than simply observing it. As a collaborative work, the film reinforces the central idea that love, memory and identity are not singular experiences, but rather constructed through our relationship with each other. The detached approach will be alienating to some viewers, but its emotional honesty outweighs everything else, including the narrative opacity that may hold some viewers back from fully embracing the film. If the audience is willing to engage with Erupcja on its own terms, it can be absolutely remarkable, especially in how it portrays love as something much deeper than the ecstatic ideal, and instead positions it as a lingering yearning that one carries with them indefinitely. The performances anchor the story, especially in how everyone is doing mostly understated, subtle work, with the philosophical complexities being what truly draws the viewer in. The ability to ask difficult questions over providing comforting resolutions is astonishing, and all goes towards this haunting and provocative examination of modern romance, resisting definition and categorisation and capturing the remarkable contradictions that make love such a fascinating concept, lingering with the viewer long after those complex closing moments.