A tale of withdrawal that feels withdrawn in its telling, Lilian T. Mehrel’s debut “Honeyjoon” traces familial relationships in the wake of loss as a mother and daughter find their way back to one another. A story of Iranian diaspora, of sexual and emotional repression, and of culture and politics experienced at a distance, the movie delivers subtext aplenty, overflowing in ways that help overcome its reserved exterior and make for an unobtrusive comedy-drama that, on occasion, comes close to working.
Opening with resplendent footage of the Azores islands in Portugal — given the appearance of old and battered film reels — “Honeyjoon” positions itself as a movie of memory. It also quickly tosses several other ideas in its thematic blender: the first contemporary images we see are of an Iranian-American 20-something, June (Ayden Mayeri), masturbating in her hotel room at dawn, before she’s interrupted by her middle-aged mother Lela (Amira Casar) shuffling back to bed. Stillness and silence follow, a mood that carries over to the duo’s meals, massages and interactions with guests and staff at their luxurious resort. The honeymoon package they’ve chosen forces them to be around each other all the time, and around young couples in love, which weighs on Lela, since her husband (and June’s father) has recently died from cancer.
A private tour of the islands with João (José Condessa), a rugged and attractive local, serves as the venue for June and Lela’s differing approaches to the trip, and to life in general. June has no time for the region’s poetic myths and is embarrassed by her mother bringing up their recent loss and mentioning the ongoing “Woman. Life. Freedom” feminist protest movement unfolding in Iran, where neither of them has been for decades. The duo’s minor emotional skirmishes take the form of stilted verbal spars, written more for expository function than underlying meaning. However, the actors’ dialed-in approach to the material — in tandem with the lush European surroundings — lends itself to attractive walk-and-talk vistas in the vein of Richard Linklater or Mia Hansen-Løve.
What’s missing from “Honeyjoon,” however, is sufficient dramatic coherence between image and story. Mehrel’s overly cautious framing rarely enhances either the interpersonal tensions between her leading ladies or the romantic and sexual excitement between June and João. The moments when the frame feels as liberated as its characters hope to are few and far between. These include glimpses of the world through June’s smartphone photographs and a short, impressionistic sequence during its closing scenes, when the characters lose themselves in dance.
Besides these occasional flourishes (and the rare footage of old film reels, reminiscent of June’s father traveling to the Azores decades prior), “Honeyjoon” remains too restrained to excavate its characters’ subdued feelings, resulting in lengthy emotional plateaus. The film may be observant, but rarely keenly so. Were it not for the wisdom Casar brings to her matriarchal role — a sense of lived experience beneath Mehrel’s objective-first dialogue — “Honeyjoon” would rarely approach its fleeting moments of poignancy. Thankfully, that it sometimes overcomes its estrangement from its own images ends up assisting its gentle saga of a mother and daughter overcoming their emotional estrangement.
There is no singular way to approach intimacy when characters are searching for ways to be happy and live life once again. These complications appear to stem from Mehrel’s loss of her own father in recent years, which ensures that “Honeyjoon” is, at the very least, emotionally honest when navigating the strange and inexplicable labyrinth of grief. However, that its other tenets remain obfuscated, from its scattered thoughts on personal freedoms to its distant political musings, yields a recipe of too many dissonant ingredients, few of which are rendered in a manner that tickles the cinematic palette. The result may be personal, but it’s also far too plain.
