First Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier, 2025)! Now this. I know that Renate Reinsve is a good actress (her lightness absolutely charmed me in A Different Man [Aaron Schimberg, 2024]), yet so many of her projects tend towards the absolutely insufferable. But while the low-level irritation of the mild yet turgid dramaturgy of Trier’s latest is one thing, Butterfly (Itonje Søimer Guttormsen, 2026) is operating at another level of unbearable Scandi cinema. This is a terrible, terrible film.
Playing a perfect parody of a trendy Nord-Deutsch type, Reinsve looks almost unrecognisable as Lily, a Hamburg creative about to perform an experimental piece at an art gallery. However, just before the show starts, she receives a text from her estranged sister Diana (Helene Bjørneby): their mother is dead, and they will have to travel to their birthplace of Gran Canaria to deal with her estate, a weird retreat centre that accidentally caused her death.
With its Gran Canaria setting and focus on the alienation of being so far away from everything — and everyone — as your life is falling apart, Damien Kocur’s excellent Under The Volcano (2024) instantly comes to mind. But the Norweigan Butterfly, trying on and taking off various different styles — widescreen landscapes, handheld video footage, weird dream sequences, documentary-like exchanges, etc — like a kid playing dress up with a sim, lacks Kocur’s acute aesthetic sense and deep understanding of dislocation. Instead, it veers quickly into Hot Milk (Rebecca Lenkiewicz, 2025) territory — using its location as an all-consuming cover rather than a springboard for its characters’ neuroses.
There’s very little conflict here; nothing that resembles a hero’s journey. And despite the seeming differences between the two women — the ultra-cool Lily, wearing an assortment of increasingly wacky outfits that would make Emily in Paris (Damien Star, 2020-) jealous, versus the straightlaced, typically Nordic Diana — they don’t seem to contrast in any interesting way.
Rather, they mope around the island “discovering themselves” instead of learning a) anything about what their mother wanted for her daughters despite her own problems, or b) anything interesting about themselves. Without much in the way of drama — and lacking any true visual shine to make up for its paltry narrative — Butterfly very quickly becomes an unwatchable slog.
Then comes the kicker: without having achieved anything of note, or set up any interesting stakes, Butterfly decides to, much like Sentimental Value, reward itself for its deep insights. The experience is like being at a party where you don’t like anyone, but then everyone sits in a circle and starts making out with each other. A waste of time for everyone involved.
Redmond is the editor-in-chief of Journey Into Cinema.