“More a vibe watch than a coherent tale.”

Big dreams get shattered in New Jersey, at least for the family of Temir (Talha Akdogan) and his father Azik (Barry Keoghan). A descendant of Circassian immigrants from the Northern Caucasus, Azik is the chef at his sister Zalya’s restaurant, and famous for his delens, traditional pies from the old country. Trying to keep his younger brother Marat (Harry Melling) in check, he dreams of running the kitchen of a far more successful Circassian restaurateur. Yet when the offer finally comes, he turns it down, leading his exasperated son to declare him weak. This takes a bit out of Azik’s spirit, so he concocts a bold plan involving a rare pelican that inexplicably landed on Jersey shores, to suprise his pregnant sister and show her and Temir that he is capable of greatness. In the meantime, Temir, a talented wrestler, has a budding relationship with a girl on his wrestling team (Jaliyah Richards), who is facing problems of her own. An altercation between Azik and Marat, a perpetual hustler and failure of a man, threatens to tear everything apart though.

After the one-two knockouts of Closeness (2017) and Beanpole (2019), Circassian director Kantemir Balagov’s English-language debut Butterfly Jam is somewhat of a letdown. All the elements of a successful film are there, from Balagov’s insight into and capturing of the milieu of hardworking immigrants struggling to make life work, to Jomo Fray’s evocative cinematography and the striking production design by Angelo Zamparutti. But somehow these elements don’t gel into a coherent tale of masculinity and male pride. A leaner screenplay might have made this film work better, but Balagov takes so many detours that it’s a full hour before the film’s driving incident (a male-on-male rape) occurs. The way Fray shoots this scene is an echo of earlier wrestling scenes with Temir, beautifully juxtaposing male strength and male toxicity in a culture where the former is highly prized; accusing a man of being weak is like a slap in the face, an affront that demands revenge. Up until this pivotal scene Butterfly Jam is more a mood piece that takes too long to find its footing.

It’s not for lack of effort from the cast, from Akdogan’s acting debut, in which he pairs boyish innocence with an impressive physique, to excellent supporting work from Melling as the family’s failure and in particular Riley Keough as the world-weary owner of a struggling diner. Keoghan is miscast but nevertheless always a pleasure to watch despite his distracting acting tics and the fact that he looks more like Temir’s older brother than his father. But it is never quite clear what Balagov is aiming at here, falling heavily into allegory in the film’s final stretch, and creating the feel of a Martin Scorsese gangster flick, but without the tough guys. A touch of magical realism, both in the form of car alarms going off (a reference to an earlier scene in which father and son force the same thing to happen) and an almost angelic appearance of Monica Bellucci in a funny cameo, cannot save a meandering script in which too many threads are left dangling or wrapped up without much resolve. The end result is that Butterfly Jam is more a vibe watch than a coherent tale, and from someone who was able to strike gold twice and is undoubtedly still a talented filmmaker, this mixed bag is disappointing.