A dormant caldera in the German Eiffel disrupts the busy lives of everyone in a rustic German village, where the biggest concerns to date have revolved around more domestic dilemmas and financial strife. Main character Michael is reluctant to follow his wife Andrea's dream of moving to the big city, rich teenager Paula feels used by her classmates - the little things in life, like Michael's careful gesture to free Andrea's coat from the car door, are swallowed by the conflicts of daily life.
In the meantime, sulphur bubbles in the lake and fish float belly up. Geologists arrive and mini quakes rattle coffee cups.
Michael and Andrea fight, neither understands why the other wishes to leave or to stay. She flees what she feels is suffocating small town confinement.
When the eruption finally blasts its way onto the screen, the characters find themselves struggling to survive and leave (or return to) the bubbling cauldron of molten lava and hurtling rocks that was once their home.
It was the ending that did it for me- all two parts of the film seemed to culminate in what was the simplest and most poignant death I've ever witnessed in film. The ending then takes us back to the things we may have missed, like coattails being caught in car doors. It is then that the power of the volcano finally hits us.
