‘Butterfly’ Review: An Oddball Comedy-Drama That Loads Renate Reinsve With Even More Estranged-Parent Issues

A potentially tranquil desert island now overrun with vacationing Europeans chugging day-glo cocktails, Gran Canaria is an intrinsically funny setting for a story of familial grief, disconnection and rapprochement, and for much of its running time, “Butterfly” gets the joke. In scene after scene, Itonje Søimer Guttormsen’s second feature gives us anguished, combative conversations discordantly soundtracked to pulsating Edm, or moments of hard-won serenity against a backdrop of luridly fluorescent kitsch. The jagged tonal chaos is the point in this bracingly offbeat story of distant sisters coming to terms with the death of their likewise estranged mother, at least until “Butterfly” drops the irony and embraces a new-age ethos initially milked for comedy.

Striking and often unpredictably moving — before an ungainly third act that frays into a profusion of endings — Søimer Guttormsen’s film places a lot of trust in its leads, erstwhile “Worst Person in the World” co-stars Renate Reinsve and Helene Bjørneby,…