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.

Amanda Plummer ravages through this film like a wounded hyena starving for what may be it's last meal come flood or high water. She may be Hollywoods best actress, but does she give a crap. I thinks not. Hollywood gives Oscars for cute models who show a talent for walking talking and chewing gum all at he same time. And if she can make herself ugly for a role, Hollywood seems astounded at her courage. Plummer can not only chew these little girls into so many wads of Jamaican licorice stick, but in this role as Eunice, she makes Robert DeNiro look like a neutered cub scout. This is as powerful a performance as you'll see. And on top of that her English accent is superb. There aren't any other actresses in Hollywood that could play this role. Maybe Renee Zellweger could come close. But I doubt she'd have the guts to do it. This is a very disturbing film. But a performance like this would make even the great Kim Stanley cringe.

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

If you generally don't like murder films you'll hate this movie, never mind the fact that it's actually very good. Very little heed (if any) is paid to the numerous victims, their bodies falling to the side of the storyline as the obsessed female lovers move on, taking the plot with them. Butterfly Kiss introduces two startlingly distinctive, unique women, opposites drawn together by loneliness and a need for balance. Eunice is a dispairing, tortured soul who searches the bland, grey motorways of England for the ever-absent Judith (does this abstract individual really exist or is she another figment of Eunice's amazingly complex and unstable psyche?). People who turn out not to be Judith tend to end up the victim of Eu's homocidal wrath (note though that Judiths importance to Eu was going to end up in mortal sacrifice also). Eunice has no inhibitions, no scruples; her behaviour is repulsive, obnoxious, sexually promiscuous, extravagantly moody. She acts purely on impulse and instinct, rarely using her devastated mind, for Eunice actually wants to be caught, and wants to be punished. In fact, she consistantly pushes her luck in aggravating people, beleiving God (and I guess the rest of the world) has forgotten her. Consequently she is forced to punish herself, wrapping her scrawny body in chains that hurt and bruise her. It is quite possible that a lot of her other actions throughout the film, which are illogical and cruel up front, are more attempts by Eu at self-punishment though that is left for the audience to mull over. Miriam, by contrast, is water to Eu's fire, a metaphor even she explains in her black and white interveiws dotted throughout the film, as she tells their story to a camera. Miriam at first looks to be dim, naive, childish and ineloquent in her speech. Reading between the lines this version of Mi fails to convince, instead giving the image of perceptive, open-minded in the extreme, generous and angelicly kind. Whether this was supposed to be Mi or was Saskia Reeves' true intelligence mistakenly worming its way to the surface is unknown, and it doesnt really matter -the character was nontheless, adorable. As lonely and love-starved as Eunice, their similarities end there. Mi is totally honest and forthcoming; her love for Eunice is complete and unconditional. Along with being painfully direct, Eunice is also implicitly dishonest. When Miriam discovers Eu's homocidal nature she is already in love. She disposes of the body without encouragment from Eu and sets out to support Eu and make her a better person. Rather she becomes a murderer herself, though through more subtle indications she retains all the original beauty and kindness of her placid personality. People who may dislike this movie are being subjectively incorrect in saying that it isn't good. Truly it is not a pleasant film to watch but it is still a worthwhile peice of artistry riddled with talent.

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.