M. Butterfly

This is David Cronenburg's best, based on a true story as bizarre and compelling as his other bizarre and compelling stories. John Lone is wondrous and Jeremy Irons is his usual cold, repressed upper class self. Perfect casting for a provocative director filming a moving story of love and loss.

Jeremy Irons plays the lead role as French diplomat, Phillipe Bouriscot, who falls in love with an absolutely seductive Chinese woman opera singer (John Lone). As Irons pursues the diva he's attracted to, she toys with his foreign ignorance of the cultural differences between their Western & Eastern societies.

In a sense, she keeps the diplomat at a distance for 18 years while their affair continues by becoming his teacher of cultural difference. The romantic & erotic chemistry between the diplomat & opera singer is a very famous true story written by David Henry Hwang--"Madame Butterfly." There have been numerous stage & screen renditions of the story.

I like this (1994) version best because David Cronenberg is undoubtedly the finest director to deal with the most important topic in the story: gender bending. "M. Butterfly" is the Canadian Cronenberg's first Hollywood funded debut. The surprise plot of the sorted true love story is one of espionage. An adults only film, it is one of intrigue, sizzling romance, twists & turns, deception & betrayal.

I've been searching for this film for a while. Having seen Videodrome, The Fly and Naked Lunch, I knew that Cronenberg was capable of making compelling, disturbing, horrific pieces which resonated in a dark, menacing way; staying with you via their visceral imagery and twisted ambiance. Having seen Dead Ringers, Spider and A Dangerous Method, I knew that Cronenberg also had another side to his work. A more restrained, mature, refined yet no less affecting style which, at its best, achieved a great level of tension without the visceral gore of his aforementioned works.

What I hadn't seen was M Butterfly. The almost unmentioned work which takes Cronenberg's more mature approach to filmmaking and fulfils his promise by giving him a jewel in what is an extremely impressive crown. I greatly enjoyed the movies I mentioned in the previous paragraph but even the best ones I felt were lacking something for me to be able to say they were a masterpiece. Perhaps they felt a little convoluted, gratuitously gory, or perhaps at times distant and even lifeless in some of his later works. But M Butterfly is none of these things; well some may say its plot is convoluted but, strangely enough, it's heavily based on a true story, or rather it's based on a novel which is based on a true story.

What M Butterfly has, which many of Cronenberg's other films lack, to varying degrees, is relatability and empathy. Pure, unadulterated empathy. It presents its characters not as good or bad; it's not interested in judging or condemning; it is a film which desires to take you deep into the world of an enchanted and tortured man: Rene Gallimard. It wishes to show you his most intimate passions and desires, his triumph, his awakening, his desperation and his suffering. It wishes to explore his self- realisation, his moments of greatest happiness and it wishes to show us his ultimate tragedy.

This is a film which echoes with symbolism. Its structure is tight, its performances, by the two leads, are heartbreakingly sublime. It is influenced by opera, by Hitchcockian psychological, twisted romance, think Vertigo. Its story opens and unfolds like a delicate rose which eventually must wilt and die. This is poetry, this is humanism. This is the most accomplished and meaningful work I've seen in a long time.

If you are even slightly tempted to investigate this then know that, despite its lack of recognition and a number of poor reviews, this film had the power to tantalise and haunt, in equal measure, at least one audience member. I was taken on a journey which I intimately understood only too profoundly. Perhaps it will mean something significant to you too.

Jeremy Irons and John Lone (who plays the character, Song Liling) should both have gotten academy awards for their performance in this incredibly enigmatic and captivating scorcher of a movie. This is a completely new twist on on the classic opera and may even be more of a believable story because it is so creatively wicked. It has a sexual tension that holds throughout the whole movie and is entirely played out in the mind and sensuously mesmerizing at the same time.

It's an emotionally tortuous journey that Jeremy Irons makes in the name of love (?), and more likely addicted passion. John Lone's performance is exceptional as one who is just as driven and hooked psychologically in his own way as what it is in him that drives him to fulfill Jeremy's ecstasy and descent into irretrievable madness.

Definitely one of the best movies ever! I hope this makes it to DVD sometime soon as it surely deserves to be seen again and again.

In 1964, in Beijing, the French Ambassaty accountant René Gallimard (Jeremy Irons) goes to a social event without his wife Jeanne Gallimard (Barbara Sukowa) and meets the opera singer Song Liling (John Lone). René becomes attracted to Song and soon he meets her at the local opera house. He falls in love with her and Song becomes his mistress. Meanwhile Ambassador Toulon (Ian Richardson) promotes René to Vice- Consul and he becomes adviser for the French Intelligence. But Song has deep secrets that the naive René does not have any idea and believes is part of the Chinese culture.

"M Butterfly" is a strange and fascinating film inspired by true events that makes it believable. Directed by David Cronemberg, "M Butterfly" is probably one of his best films with an intriguing love story about clash of cultures, having China as background in a troubled revolutionary moment great acting and magnificent cinematography and set decoration. Even when watched more than once, "M Butterfly" is still an attractive gem. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "M Butterfly"