“Romería” is the Spanish word for pilgrimage, ostensibly a clear and apt title for the third feature by writer-director Carla Simón. Based on travels the filmmaker herself undertook as a teenager to meet an extended family she had never known, this is a kind of road movie by sea, journeying in pursuit of some sense of self-completion. Yet as the film wends its way through the narrow streets, harbors and glittering waters of Spain’s salty Galician coastline, immersing itself in chaotic gatherings of family and community, the title’s spiritual aspect takes on a rueful irony. There’s no holy destination or revelation here, and certainly no warm sense of homecoming — though in finding where she doesn’t belong, Simón’s fictional alter ego can at last make sense of her own fragmented childhood memories, and those she’s retrieved from her late biological parents.

After the expansive sociological...