Butterfly Jam

Puppy love, pink lycra, pelicans and Monica Bellucci: who would have thought they would feature in Kantemir Balagov’s follow up of his doom-and-gloom, 1940s-set, Russian PTSD drama Beanpole? With Butterfly Jam, the Los Angeles-based Russian filmmaker has proved his ability to transform his metier while sticking close to the issues closest to him.

Veering well away from his much-acclaimed 2019 festival hit and equally dark first feature, the kidnap drama Closeness, Balagov‘s latest outing is a warm, colour-saturated and sporadically magical and comical family drama set in a tightly-knit community in Newark, but with tension and trauma looming ever close on its seemingly happy-go-lucky protagonists.

Bolstered by excellent performances from his cast, especially that of the impressive Kazakh-born Turkish-American first-time actor Talha Akdogan, Balagov succeeds once again with a film that is at once specific in its cultural setting and universal in its meditation about masculinity and its discontents. Based on an idea originally set in his hometown in the Caucasus, he and co-screenwriter Marina Stepnova have produced something that never seems anachronistic. The 34-year-old filmmaker, who fled Russia in 2022 after his outspoken criticism against Vladmir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, plunges the viewer into a social universe that is authentic in its details and unique in its imagination.

Working with cinematographer Jomo Fray (Nickel Boys), Balagov conjures a realistic, empathetic but hardly voyeuristic picture of a working-class, inner-city, ethnic-minority community with all their joys and conflicts, as they try to fashion the American Dream to their own distinct social circumstances. Teaming up with an international crew – Angelo Zamparutti and Judy Shrewsbury with their production and costume designs brimming with details of the characters’ rough and rolling lives, Evgeni and Sasha Galperine’s score that forebodes joy and danger – Balagov should set Butterfly Jam flying through the festival circuit after its premiere at Cannes as the opening film of the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar.

The title of the film alludes to a special condiment made by Azik (Barry Keoghan), a thirty-something renowned in his neighbourhood for his cooking. This gift leads him to dream of one day running his own diner. While soft-spoken and generous in his own way, Azik obviously positions himself as the alpha male of his circle: he acts as a protector to his pregnant sister Zalya (Riley Keough), belittles his slightly unhinged sidekick Marat (British actor Harry Melling), and rebuffs offers to work as a chef in a more well-off friend’s new eating establishment because he wants to be his own man and no one else’s. Balagov reveals the bubbling tension in this set-up from the get-go, as the film begins with all the men joking and jousting with each other over a card game in a dimly-lit kitchen.

As the men exchange barbed comments, enter the beating and fluttering heart of the film. Pyteh (played by Akdogan) is a mild-mannered 16-year-old who seems to be more mature than the adults in the room. However much he seems to revere his father and enjoys spending time and playing pranks with him – their favourite, and one that Balagov illustrates most vividly, being their attempt to set off the security alarms of cars parked on their street – he also despairs of the schemes cooked up by his father and Marat in their pursuit of entrepreneurial success.

Using his real name of Temir, Pyteh (which means “the little one” in Circassian) is already making a name for himself in junior-level statewide wrestling championships. Rather than showing the teenager at his most masculine when he’s doing the sport, Balagov actually teases the sensitive soul in him when he’s on and off the mat. The boy’s pastel-pink singlet sets him apart from his peers, and it’s at practice that he develops a bashful blush at Alika (Jaliyah Richards), a glum Nigerian-American girl blazing with her own adolescent issues. The pair quickly bonds, leading to perhaps one of the most innocuously sensual scenes about acne in the history of cinema.

Bar the out-of-nowhere cameo from Bellucci, the most eye-poppingly bizarre turn in Butterfly Jam involves a pelican Alik procures as a gift for his sister. The comedy of seeing the (real) bird flapping about in a cluttered apartment soon spirals into tragedy, as Alik’s endless boasting of landing the creature – which he considers a sign of his masculine prowess – eventually leads to a violent death, and Pyteh slips into confusion and a misguided thirst for revenge.

Fresh-faced Akdogan’s poignant performance brings Pyteh’s internal contradictions to the surface in the most vivid of ways, as he plays up the awkwardness of his own gangly physique and his tender emotions spiraling slowly out of control as the story moves along. Whereas Beanpole reflects on what femininity should mean and could be, Butterfly Jam poses the same question for masculinity in a different time, place and approach – but with equal power.

Director: Kantemir Balagov
Screenwriter: Marina Stepnova, Kantemir Balagov
Producers: Pascal Cauchetaeux, Pauline Lamy, Marco Perego, Alexander Rodnyansky
Executive producers: David Taghioff, Masha Magonova, Michael Cerenzie, Michael Paletta, Kantemir Balagov, Michael Kupisk, Barry Keoghan, Dessie Byrne, Riley Keough, Gina Gammell, Sacha Ben Harroche, Gaetan Rousseau
Cast: Barry Keoghan, Talha Akdogan, Riley Keough, Harry Melling, Jaliyah Richards
Cinematography: Jomo Fray
Editing: Kantemir Balagov, Juliette Welfling, Mathilde Chazaud
Production design: Angelo Zamparutti
Costume: Judy Shrewsbury
Music: Evgeni and Sacha Galperine
Sound: Valérie De Loof
Production companies: Why Not Productions with Senator Film Produkton, Les Films Du Fleuve, Arte France Cinéma, A.R. Content and Goodfellas
World sales: Goodfellas
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Opening Film, Directors’ Fortnight)
In English, Circassian
102 minutes