For the 20-something June (Ayden Mayeri), the protagonist of the strange, sensual dramedy “Honeyjoon,” a vacation resort in the Azores means itty-bitty bikinis and scoping out the local bachelors. Too bad her wingwoman is her mother, Lela (Amira Casar), a Persian-British couples therapist still hurting from the death of her husband, June’s father, from cancer. The duo have come to paradise to commemorate the anniversary of his passing, but each woman has different expectations for what that means. This friction — among others — plays out amid an ambient melancholy and a dry, occasionally frisky, sense of humor.
Tragicomedy strikes early on when the women realize they’re surrounded by honeymooners, twisting a knife in the side of Lela’s loss. To avoid the newlyweds, June books a private tour manned by João (José Condessa), a steely stud who seems immune to June’s attempts at seduction and much more charmed by her mother.
The script by the writer-director Lilian T. Mehrel is a bit heavy-handed in the way it plots out the women’s differences: Lela, the epitome of someone aged like fine wine, is profound and perceptive, though her social media “activism” — she obsessively tracks the online activities of a women’s rights group in Iran — is lightly mocked and set against June’s thirst-trap agenda, a sort of feminism in and of itself. June, an American millennial who never bothered to learn Persian (though she claims some knowledge when João shows interest), prefers keeping things fun and fluffy — the easier to relax, she tells her buzzkill of a mom.
Lela’s grief, in any case, isn’t explosive; it hangs over the film like the island’s profusion of purgatory-evoking fog. The cinematographer Inés Gowland’s soft, painterly compositions, too, temper the film’s emotions; because June is big on selfies, a handful of sightseeing scenes are captured from the playful perspective of an iPhone video, releasing some of the pressure of the film’s more somber visuals. These delicate mood-shifts are the film’s strength, sanding over (to an extent) the clunkiness of its themes to achieve a special balance: “Honeyjoon” is both a mourning movie, and a horny one.
Honeyjoon
Not rated. In English, Portuguese and Persian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes. In theaters.
