You can watch the entirety of “Murina,” the new film by director Antoneta Alamat Kusijanovic, without catching on as to what it is, exactly, the title refers to. It’s not the 17-year-old girl (Gracija Filipovic) who is at the center of the story. That would be Julija, a name repeated throughout the movie, usually by Ante (Leon Lucev), her vociferous-bordering-on-abusive father. Nor is it the remote Croatian island that serves as the movie’s setting. Who or what, then, is “Murina”?

“Murina” is the Serbo-Croatian term for a moray eel, a creature that is hunted in the film for the sustenance it provides the family, friends, and business associates visiting Ante’s home on the Adriatic. The murina also serves as a metaphorical double for Julija, who is sleek, supple, and possessed of a temperament that can be volatile when approached. Like the moray eel, Julija thrives in the water. That, and it’s best to be wary of her bite.

Julija and Ante spend their mornings spear-fishing, but these father-daughter outings are, to put it mildly, tense. Parents will recognize Julija’s capricious demeanor, a seemingly arbitrary grab-bag of shifting moods, as being true-to-form for adolescent conduct. Yet being around Ante is no walk in the park: He’s controlling, short-tempered, avaricious, and not a little paranoid. Ante loves his beautiful wife, Nela (Danica Čurčić); his beautiful daughter, we’re not so sure about. 

The plot of “Murina” hinges on a business deal Ante is trying to finagle between the local community and Javier (Cliff Curtis), a former associate who has gone on to become incredibly wealthy. The dynamic between Ante and Javier is, at best, knotty. Although there’s much ado about the bonding of compatriots, Javier’s attitude toward Ante makes only a polite nod toward friendship. When Ante makes a toast to Javier at a dinner party, Javier reciprocates by forgiving Andre for a past boatride that ended in disaster. The audience cringes along with the guests.

The power dynamic between the two is made all the more strained when we learn that Javier and Nela have a history between them — one that doesn’t seem altogether over. Julija, bristling under Ante’s thumb, encourages her mother to resume the relationship. Not only is Javier rich, he’s famous, or, rather, notorious. When Julija surreptitiously goes through his suitcase, she discovers a recent issue of BusinessWeek, the cover of which features a close-up of Javier’s face and the  headline, “The Ruthless Icon.”

Is Ms. Kusijanovic, who wrote the script along with Frank Graziano, a fan of Patricia Highsmith? With its ethical fluidity, uneasy sexuality, and underlying menace, “Murina” encompassses an amoral universe that is strikingly similar to that seen in Highsmith’s works, and to “Purple Noon,” the purest cinematic transcription of her books. Certainly, the juxtaposition of an island paradise with base human behavior is milked for all its worth. That Julija can’t separate her father’s venality from the island’s beauty is among the striking leitmotifs of “Murina.”

Another concerns the dominion of men. “Chauvinism,” Ms. Kusijanovic writes in a statement accompanying the picture, “is so deeply rooted in our society that we often mistake it for our cultural mentality.” Sundry reviewers are lauding “Murina” as a comment on patriarchal culture. Yet this is the least convincing aspect of the film, as both the oleaginous Javier and, especially, the hyperbolic Ante are, if not cartoon characters, then stock villains of obvious symbolic import. I mean, nuanced they’re not.

Fortunately, their respective lack of complexity is compensated for by Ms. Čurčić, whose turn as a woman tempted by past liaisons and grounded by a misplaced sense of duty transforms a supporting role into a dramatic fulcrum. And then there’s the remarkable Ms. Filipovic, who spends a significant part of the movie wearing a one-piece bathing suit and whose ability to embody conflicting states of mind is as limber and true as her swimming. Both actresses do right by Ms. Kusijanovic’s meditation on the machinations and complexities of familial responsibility.