While we don’t get much of a backstory for Claude or get to know him in the way that we do Nel and Bethany, he still feels like a fleshed out, fully-formed character, one that reveals himself in fragments. Through presence, energy and the way he moves between people and spaces rather than anything he explicitly says or does. Harris imbues Claude with such an easy, unforced presence that he feels less like someone you’ve known for a very long time rather than just a supporting character in a film. “One of the things that was really exciting to me was thinking what type of Black people live abroad,” says Harris when asked about the process of finding Claude. “I have a lot of friends who moved to Germany and Portugal so Pete and I just started talking a lot about those guys and girls and everyone in between. I thought that it would be really fun to look at some of the Black people I saw in Warsaw and try to make sense of how they got there, so I went to this African hair-braiding salon and talked to them about their life in Warsaw, what they did, who they hung out with. I met a few people at parties and it became this really fun thing to piece together a sort of biography for this guy and in doing so, we found him to be this really exciting traveler who decided that he didn’t want to be a little fish in a big pond like he would’ve been in Berlin. He wanted to have space to really shine and he saw Warsaw as an opportunity for that. That sort of self-possession was something that we really liked about Claude and it informed how he would engage with the rest of the characters in the movie.”

But ultimately, the heart and soul of the film is the relationship between Nel and Bethany. It’s messy, magnetic, and a little elusive. Something that sits somewhere between friendship and something deeper. Ohs leans into that ambiguity rather than trying to pin it down. There’s history there, but it comes in flashes. Inside jokes, old habits, the ease of slipping back into something comfortable and familiar. At the same time, there’s tension bubbling underneath it, a push and pull between what this connection means and what it costs. Nel feels it as something real, something that could anchor her, while Bethany treats it more like an escape, something fleeting, something she can dip in and out of without consequence.

It’s a complex dynamic, one that may have been very tricky to pull off. But Charli and Góra prove to be more than capable of rising up to the challenge, each delivering wildly different yet equally mesmerizing performances both individually and together. While they both give stunning performances, the film truly sings when they’re both on-screen together. “It was extremely easy to work with Charli,” gushes Góra. “It really was. We were, for a little bit, maybe a little worried. We’re getting this incredible pop star—what is she gonna be like? And then she came in and was just the most cool and easy, because it’s actually a rare quality. I come from one big HBO Max show to the next, on these big sets with large amounts of expectations that often create everything but an easy flow. And then we have the world’s biggest pop star coming in who is just a gentle, good collaborator, who gives space and is curious. I love that she gets to be really… she’s really curious. I just love curious people around me. I had a great time.”

That chemistry was something Charli and Góra managed to build on set while filming, reveals Ohs. “A lot of the things I do are intentional and by design, and one of the things is that we shot the movie in order,” he says. “And even though in the story Nel and Bethany know each other from childhood, in the movie they don’t cross paths until day four of the shoot. What that meant was, on day one, as we’re doing costume design conversations, and on these other days we’re hanging out every night, each night we would have dinner, and Lena and Charli would be on the balcony smoking, drinking wine, and I’m like, that’s them building their backstory, that’s them finding their chemistry. We’re not having to film it right away, they’re developing it, so that by the time we do put it on camera, they have already found rhythm, they have created a history. Yes, it’s very short, it’s four days of history, but because they’re imaginative people, they were able to extrapolate that into the whole lives of these characters. And I think that also adds to the natural chemistry that they have once we finally do see them interact, that they had been vibing and found it in this natural, organic way.”

“But also within the context of the world of the movie, the Nel and the Bethany of it all, the first meeting we have in the film, the ‘you look different and you look the same’ moment, it really was the first scene we shot together, I think,” adds Góra. “And this was us figuring out our relationship. How do we feel about each other? And this was really an electric moment. Everybody, the whole crew was there, and when we finally stood there in that eruption of these two universes, Bethany’s universe with Rob and Nel’s universe with her sister and her flower shop, and then the eruptive moment of us coming together, I remember, was so beautiful, and it felt really electric. And from then on, which is something that I love about the way we did this, we didn’t have to do a big method acting of me and Charli holding hands outside of the scene or whatever. The moment the cameras start rolling, we would look at each other and we would dive into that place, that energy that we left when Pete called cut, and then go right back into that really electric, sexy place. The air between us would always be really thick. We didn’t need to present it in a very obvious way, but I feel that the air in the room is full of eruptive excitement that comes with that love that you kind of don’t know what to do about, but it’s really there, and we all really felt that.”

In addition to a phenomenal, surprisingly nuanced performance, Charli also brought something else to the film, something no other person could have offered or brought to the table other than her: her very passionate fanbase, the Angels. “The angels have saved us so many times,” says Harris. “The angels were the only reason we had background extras in multiple scenes. The Polish angels came together, they flapped their wings, and filled out places and gave us the bodies we needed in the nightclub scene, in the party scene, in the most generous of ways. I am forever grateful to the Angels.”

And while Charli xcx has a growing slate of film projects on the horizon, Erupcja feels like the right place to meet her as an actress; stripped back, instinctive, soulful and without vanity. Ohs and crew don’t ask her to perform at you. They let her exist, to move, to react. And in doing so, Erupcja reveals something far more interesting than a debut. It shows you what she might become in the future.