A world premiere at IFFR and Göteborg pretty much simultaneously should be a good fit for Norwegian maverick director Itonje Søimer Guttormsen, having ventured into cross-border projects during virtually all of her career. Like her debut feature, Gritt [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Itonje Søimer Guttormsen
fiche film], her new film, Butterfly [+lire aussi :
interview : Itonje Søimer Guttormsen
fiche film], offers generous servings of performance and conceptual art, and also ventures into the ritualistic side of things.

It all starts as a family drama with a touch of crime-thriller, as a 68-year-old Norwegian woman is found electrocuted in an astronomy dome on Gran Canaria. Her two estranged daughters, Diana, a nursery worker living in Norway, and Lily, a Hamburg-based performance artist (occasionally sporting a giant prosthetic penis), travel back to their childhood surroundings, where their mum worked as a tourist host. Clammed-up big sister Diana is played by Helene Bjørnby, memorable in Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World [+lire aussi :
critique
bande-annonce
interview : Joachim Trier
fiche film] as the woman who hits her head on a lamp while dancing at the summer house where Julie’s boyfriend Aksel’s friends gather. The sullen Lily is played by Julie herself in that same film, Renate Reinsve, and is hardly a better person this time around. What’s more, this well-known face of Nordic vivacity, currently captivating the world on her Oscars voyage, is barely recognisable here, all piercings, pock marks, plucked eyebrows and herpes sores. It’s masterful make-up. A possible explanation for the noteworthy difference in their personalities is the two siblings’ different fathers. As for their shared mum, she liked to sleep around.

Mum Vera, vibrantly played by 1970s Playboy centrefold icon Lillian Müller, is seen at the movie’s start and in filmed footage. She cleaned up and remained on Gran Canaria, acquiring some land and setting up a spiritual centre, the Butterfly Retreat, offering “a transformation in seven steps”. The astronomy dome, designed to bring cleansing and rebirth, became her death trap. Diana and Lily arrive to inspect their maternal inheritance, hoping to put it up for sale, and then get out and get on with their lives. Once there, they run in to Chato, Vera’s partner, who is currently wanted as a prime suspect in relation to her death. Numan Acar, seen in Homeland and the Spiderman franchise, can certainly look threatening, but his Chato is nothing of the sort, enlightening the two sisters on assorted otherworldly realities, including the rebirth of the senses and clearing the dust from the past.

As noted, Itonje Søimer Guttormsen likes to cross borders, and around here, she does just that, as Butterfly is no longer a crime-mystery. The sisters stay on, experiencing the world of their mother through the people she interacted with, often like-minded in their search for spirituality. One of them is Gritt from Norway, the very same main character from the director’s previous film. Otherwise, these folks are the real thing, actual residents of this region, close to nature and specialising in the rituals derived from it. This gradual shift in the storyline also hammers home the probably main and all-encompassing point – that of closure and acceptance. That’s the real maternal inheritance here, and is not for sale.

Butterfly is a Norwegian-Swedish-UK-German co-production staged by Mer Film, Zentropa International Sweden and Quiddity Films. Its international sales are overseen by Protagonist Pictures.