The title of Anorgasmia is misleading: no sexual frustrations are explored, and for better or worse, there is very little sex on screen; in fact, there are only some rather innocent hints at its occurrence or failure. Instead, it deals with the emotional turmoil of dissatisfaction – not in bed, but in relationships in general – stemming from the reality of “liquid love” (conceptualised by Zygmunt Bauman) and its typical manifestations, such as instant hookups and a general consumerist attitude towards the other, in which the natural craving for genuine human connection is being drowned out. It’s as if director Jon Einarsson Gustafsson is seeking to penetrate this pervasive lack of sensitivity, ingrained alongside the ideals of “free love” in Generation X, matured in the Millennials and crystallised in the internet-raised Gen Z: a numbness often rooted in the fear of closeness and commitment, and further nurtured by today’s digitally dominated, deeply alienating environment.

In this context, Anorgasmia, currently showing in the International Competition of the 41st Warsaw Film Festival, unfolds more as a social experiment, like in an adrenaline-fuelled reality show: it traps its characters on a cold island where cuddling would feel like a good idea. They are temporarily cut off from the rest of the world, in a state akin to co-dependence and with no stable internet connection. Pushed into this predicament, and lost at the ends of the Earth, his nomads are forced to speak in person, to run from one another (yet inevitably meet again), to form bonds and, ultimately, to invest in their emotions.

The experiment’s premise is simple: travellers Sam (Edward Hayter) and Naomi (Mathilde Warnier) randomly meet in a Reykjavik hostel, talk honestly like strangers who might never meet again allow themselves to, and share an instant spark of attraction. However, she rapidly withdraws, perhaps because of his openly admitted practice of ghosting girls along the way. The next day, a volcano erupts and the airport closes, so they, seemingly unwilling yet filled with enthusiasm, embark on a road trip in a stolen car: Sam is hoping to take the first photos of the eruption and sell them for a fortune, while Naomi is hoping to kill time until the inevitable return to a marriage proposal she is hesitant to accept. Amidst mildly dramatic peripeties, not-so-serious quarrels, geysers, strangers and confessional urges, they, of course, surrender to romance and the accompanying sadness that holds them back, for nothing binds them together in reality beyond the transient “survivor” moment they inhabit. Can love actually thrive in an era when one can create things and then erase them all with a single click?

The open ending tries to wager on hope in this regard, but neither the light adventure nor the fairly shallow dialogue enables us to imagine Naomi and Sam as the next Céline and Jesse from the Before Sunrise trilogy. What seems more likely is that the strange nature of Iceland – interpreted through the eyes of an Icelander like Jon Einarsson Gustafsson, who has spent years abroad, captured by UK-based cinematographer Graeme Dunn, made even more evocative by the music of Michael Brook, and explored in the story through the perspectives of tourists – will attract other tourists dreaming of beautiful romances amid these landscapes, just like in the movies.

Anorgasmia was produced by Iceland’s Artio Films, in co-production with the Czech Republic’s BFilm and Canada’s Great Canadian Film Factory.