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‘Under the Volcano’ Review: A Ukrainian Family’s Vacation Turns Into Wartime Exile in Simmering Drama
A family from Kyiv learns their stay in Spain has become indefinite with the invasion of Ukraine in Damian Kocur's tense sophomore feature.
There is a suggestion early that “Under the Volcano” could be a dry Ruben Ostlund-style satire when a conga line can be seen dancing to “Guantanamera” around the family as they frantically check their phones for updates, but the irony is intended less for humor than to convey a world carrying on as a humanitarian tragedy unfolds. The point is made even clearer when Sofiia befriends Mike, an African immigrant who has eked out a living selling bracelets to tourists and can’t shake the memory of those who traveled with him to Spain and didn’t make it. Although Kocur sticks the landing and doesn’t need to supply much context for the earliest moments of the family discovering what is going on back home, the uncertainty they feel threatens to become tedious around the mid-section when the film mainly follows Sofiia, who is at once the most connected to what’s going on and the most dismissive of it because of her chronically online disposition.
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