Butterfly Jam review – Barry Keoghan can’t save this New Jersey misstep
Cannes film festival: The Irish actor portrays a disillusioned Circassian chef with a unique connection to animals in Kantemir Balagov’s uneven third feature.
All talented directors experience a misstep at some point in their careers – and this appears to be the moment for Kantemir Balagov, whose previous work was widely acclaimed. This follow-up, his third feature film and first in English, is set within the expatriate Circassian community in New Jersey. It includes notable actors and a conspicuous cameo by a well-known icon, seemingly intended to signal cinephile significance. Butterfly Jam is contrived, tonally inconsistent, implausible, and at times simply silly in its subdued form of magic realism. The film also features awkward, derivative dialogue reminiscent of Mean Streets and an overly didactic focus on ethnic cuisine, while key scenes are elliptically presented off camera without clear narrative justification.
Barry Keoghan stars as Azik, a widower who, alongside his pregnant sister Zalda (Riley Keough), operates a Circassian diner in Newark. As the chef, Azik prepares a sublime dish of cheese and potatoes based on his own secret recipe, complemented by an assortment of jams, one of which he whimsically claims is made from butterflies. (Presumably a joke, though his remarkable affinity with the natural world is demonstrated throughout.) His teenage son Temir (Talga Akdogan) is a promising wrestler with Olympic aspirations and harbors a tender crush on fellow wrestler Alika (Jaliyah Richards).
Azik is content with his modest diner but contemplates whether he could earn more working in one of the upscale restaurants owned by Kantik (Zaramok Bachok), a successful local entrepreneur. He is also frustrated by having to tolerate and watch over Marat (Harry Melling), a boorish and irritating beta-male friend whose insecure roughhousing frequently threatens to escalate into violence. Beneath their banter lies a pervasive macho tension: who is dominant, who is subordinate, who is strong, and who is weak?
In a whimsical and romantic gesture, Azik captures a wild pelican that had recently been featured on local television and keeps it in a storage unit, intending it as an eccentric birth gift for his future niece. The act of capturing the pelican is one of the off-camera moments the film asks viewers to accept on trust – an omission that, in this case, functions reasonably well. However, a more perplexing scene occurs when, at Marat’s inappropriate suggestion, Azik hires a local sex worker for Temir’s 16th birthday, marking his coming of age. This sequence culminates in a chaotic and humiliating brawl with another client at her apartment, but the film does not show the resolution of this conflict, leaving a narrative gap that is neither engaging nor dramatically satisfying.
Similarly, a scene where Azik visits Kantik’s restaurant with Temir, apparently to explore employment opportunities, is followed by a cut to Azik informing Temir that he was turned down. This could be interpreted as a face-saving measure to conceal the fact that Azik was never offered a job. Yet, Kantik is portrayed as an ardent admirer of Azik’s cooking, so why would he reject him? Was the salary insufficient, despite Kantik’s apparent wealth? Or was Azik unwilling to disappoint Zalda? The ambiguity here results in confusion rather than intrigue.
The narrative builds toward a hateful crime, which serves as the film’s climactic moment. However, this event is notably implausible, particularly given the apparent absence of police involvement. Following this dramatic flourish, the film descends into sentimentality. While Keoghan and Keough deliver moments of intensity and eloquence, the overall production is a misfire.
