On the anniversary of her husband's passing, a woman travels to the Azores hoping to bond with her daughter.
Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by: Lilian T Mehrel
Starring: Ayden Mayeri, Amira Casar, José Condessa
Lela (Amira Casar), the middle-aged protagonist of writer/director Lilian T. Mehrel's quietly insightful debut Honeyjoon, is torn between two worlds. As a teenager, her family left Iran for England following the Islamic revolution of 1979. She now doesn't recognise her homeland, observing from afar the atrocities committed by its regime on those involved in the Woman,Life.,Freedom movement. But Lela isn't entirely comfortable with the West either. While bemoaning the misogyny of Iran, she frowns at her American daughter June's (Ayden Mayeri) embracing of freedom, constantly trying to persuade her to cover herself up.
A year after Lela's husband succumbed to cancer, Lela and June have travelled to the Portuguese Azores, a place the departed often spoke fondly of, having visited as a young man. They plan to throw a lock of his hair into the sea on the anniversary of his passing.
Lela and June have very different ideas for the trip. Lela wants to embrace her pain. She desires nothing more than to hold her daughter and cry. But June hopes to be embraced by the arms of one of the hunky Portuguese men who work at their hotel instead. One such heartthrob, Joao (José Condessa), takes Lela and June on a tour of the island, visiting the spots Lela's husband often spoke of and this trip makes up the bulk of the film.
Honeyjoon has a similar conceit to Kogonada's Columbus, that of a troubled visitor bonding with a local as they show them around. But Mehrel adopts a much more comedic approach, mining laughs from June's insensitivity to her mother's way of grieving. While Lela finds comfort in Joao's tour and his well rehearsed philosophical musings, June spends the trip flirting with him, with frustrating results.
The conflict between mother and daughter is largely unspoken, but we're offered breadcrumbs that lead us to join the dots. We're told June dropped out of medical school, and we surmise she only took the course for her parents' sake. Lela left Iran for freedom, but ironically she fails to understand her daughter's desire for a life of her own choosing. We all inevitably disappoint our mothers, and we're often forced to in order to live our own lives, but this trip offers June the chance to make her mother happy by simply sharing her pain. Mehrel builds her narrative around the question of whether or not June can do so, even if she has to feign it for her mother's sake.
Honeyjoon is filled with moments of irony, some sad, some funny. Despite June's constant unsubtle flirtations, the male hotel staff seem to show more interest in her mother. When June eventually hooks up with one of her Portuguese pursuits the moment is ruined when the emotion of the trip finally hits her and she breaks down in tears. Mehrel intercuts this with Lela pleasuring herself back in the hotel room shower. It's a beautiful piece of filmmaking that speaks volumes wordlessly regarding what these two women are feeling. It's a cathartic moment, both women finding relief in something they've been stubbornly avoiding.
At a brief 80 minutes, Honeyjoon breezes by gently, like a feather caught in wind. It's a small story that's intimate in nature, but one that says a lot in its soft-spoken voice. This mother and daughter may not know each other as well as they should, but by the end of Mehrel's film we feel like we've known them a long time, and we wish we could spend more time in the company of these beautiful women.
