Stranger opens up a family

Once again, the premature loss of a loved one begets family dysfunction in the strangely uneven, yet occasionally resonant “Around June.” Why writer-directorproducer James Savoca chose to spend his movie’s first act in an excruciating La La Land of treacly narration, airy-fairy dialogue (“Either one finds life — or is found by life!”) and characters who talk to trees is a creative mystery. Fortunately, Savoca sets his demonstrative story on a more realistic course before it’s irrevocably deep-sixed.

The titular June (Samaire Armstrong) is an ethereal young waitress living in a cluttered old house in San Francisco’s Potrero Hill district with her bitter, alcoholic dad (a strong Jon Gries) and gentle, mentally disabled uncle (Brad William Henke). The trio, bound together for years by fear and sadness, are the survivors of a long-ago car crash that killed June’s mother. And things went downhill from there.

Into this hermetically sealed world arrives Juan Diego (Oscar H. Guerrero), a handsome illegal immigrant who offers love and direction to June as he tries to find his own place in an unwelcoming new environment that, not incidentally, includes June’s racist father.

As everyone’s souls are finally bared, the movie solidifies in some satisfying ways that help surmount its various pretensions, forced eccentricities and disruptive animated bits. “Around June.” No MPAA rating. Running time: 1hour, 32 minutes. At Laemmle’s Town Center 5, Encino.