Butterfly Kiss

The title is misleading for a film that really doesn't have anything pleasant about it. Amanda Plummer's character made my skin crawl and still haunts me when watching her other work. I suppose this gives strength to her performance and shows she is a great character actor. Saskia Reeves takes on a role as a wimpish lesbian besotted with Amanda Plummer's character. Saskia usually plays stronger more interesting roles but I suppose it creates contrast. Be prepared for a road movie with a difference. Lots of gore and little compassion.

This is a strange British film which revolves around a relationship between two characters that alternates between super sweet and super disturbing (one of them has a penchant for asking people at petrol stations if they've heard a specific love song then kills them afterwards). Love and redemption, like a modern Shakespearean tragedy, courses through the film's veins. The repetitive nature of the narrative coalesces into a hypnotic rhythm, riding the pace out sleekly. Though scripted, the film feels spontaneous, exciting and shows subtle natural variation on a theme. The characters attempt to obtain purification, thinking that murder is the only way they can downplay their other more humanly flaws. Powerful, strong film that is refreshingly modest and practical.

What prompted me to write this was reading another viewer review that claimed this film was terrible. Now, I am not going to attack that reviewer; everyone is entitled to their own opinion and all that, but I am going to tell you why I disagree with what that person wrote.

Eunice and Miriam are the central characters. Known to each other as Eu and Mi, (You and Me). Eunice feels God has forgotten her, so makes has to punish herself or her sins and crimes. Miriam is a sweet, sensitive girl, a complete opposite to Eu. At opposite ends of whatever the scale might have been, Eu and Mi cross the country so Eu can find the only person she has ever loved...

It is a shocking tale. It is disturbing, depressing. It is, for me more of a tragedy that Hamlet and Macbeth put together and multiplied a hundred times. Love and Redemption. Love. Love. Love. That's what it's all about.

The final scene of any film should be something. I have never cried so hard in a film as I have in this one. Everybody who considers themself a fan of the 'non-Hollywood' style film with heart and guts, then see this incredible film! 10/10

In England, the psychopath Eunice (Amanda Plummer) takes rides to gas stations seeking out a song and a woman called Judith that would be in love with her in the cashier of convenience stores. When she takes a ride, she usually kills the driver and leaves the car on the next gas station. When Eunice stumbles upon the naive lesbian Miriam (Saskia Reeves), she brings Eunice home to stay with her. But Eunice wants to find Judith and Miriam decides to go with her. Soon she realizes that Eunice is insane and bipolar but she follows her in her crime spree.

"Butterfly Kiss" is a disturbing but also boring movie directed by Michael Winterbottom. The weird Amanda Plummer is in the top of her career quite immediately after "Pulp Fiction" but the plot is too sick and repetitive. Maybe in 1995 this film could be more attractive, but today it is annoying. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "O Beijo da Borboleta" ("The Butterfly Kiss")

Seeing that so many people have gone out of their way to denigrate Butterfly Kiss, I feel constrained to weigh in on its virtues.

It is not a Hollywood entertainment, nor is it a Jane Austen prestige picture, or a politely naughty comedy for the art house crowd. It's a movie for people who are willing to risk a certain amount of emotional discomfort to gain the benefits of experiencing the world through unaccustomed perspectives. It's for those who want to learn about human beings on the margins of society, the forgotten, the pathological, the lost.

It's the sort of film that can't be appreciated without a high tolerance for unsympathetic protagonists, unreliable narrators, unintelligible motivations, and morally ambiguous conclusions.

In short, Butterfly Kiss demands an intellectual curiosity and nimbleness of mind that's not always characteristic of American audiences.

This is not to argue that it's necessarily a good film, or successful at achieving its ambitions. More than once, while watching it, I found myself wondering how much relation to real people this story might actually have. Unlike Monster, with which it has obvious parallels, Butterfly Kiss doesn't appear to be based on factual events.

The film's ability to cause me to "suspend disbelief" suffered from a touch too much Grand Guignol excess and, perhaps more damningly, writerly artifice. (For no clear reason, the protagonists are named "You"(Eunice) & "Me" (Miriam).)

But the characters kept on surprising me, which indicates, if nothing else, that there's something vital and alive about this story. By the end, I was moved to pity for these two deeply damaged women, and, perhaps more importantly, I was moved to compassion.

For that, I'd sit through an unpleasant movie any day of the week.