Swallowtail Butterfly

Simply Brilliant. One of my favorite films of all time. Incredible sociopolitical backdrop, incredible array of characters, incredible diversity of situations, styles, nuances. I love and adore this film from the gut to the heart to the mind. On every level it hits a nerve, and my only regret is that this hefty piece of work isn't longer still because the characters get so far under your skin and burrowed into your soul that when the credits roll you feel as though the vacation has come to an end and you're bidding your friends farewell.

This beautiful movie is set in present-day Japan, but shows to the rest of the world what the future might look like if the WTO brings about their goals. The film centers on some losers of globalization and free world trade who make it big when they discover a tape ("My Way"!) which allows them to make counterfeit Yen. The money soon destroys their solidarity though, and separately they have to face their own problems (expulsion to China, the Yakuza who's after the tape, drugs and a nosy journalist who wants to find the dirt in Glico's success story).

But it's a modern fairy tale, not a naturalistic drama, so expect miracles and uplifting twists and turns rather than a depressing end. The director obviously loves all his characters and so will you; the black boxer with the innocent soul of a child, the philosophical doctor/tattoo-artist, the American who speaks only Japanese, the killer with the b/w-painted face and the cool female sniper are all wonderful characters and these are just the small roles!

If you love movies where people speak in different tongues (in this case Japanese, Mandarin and English) this is THE film for you. If you don't, still go see this masterpiece of innovative filmmaking. You'll thank me for the recommendation.

This is not anything like Iwai Shunji's "Shigatsu Monogatari", with its rather innocent themes and situations. In contrast, "Swallowtail Butterfly" jumps right in with stylized shots of destitute living, seedy shantytowns full of drugs and prostitution, and somewhat gratuitous violence. It was surprising that more than a third of the dialogue was in some form of English, seeing as how the Yentowns all seemed to come from the lower rungs of their respective non-English-speaking countries (i.e., those not able to attend English classes at the grade school and higher level), excepting of course the American boxer. How ironic that they managed to speak better English than most Japanese who have taken several years of English in school. The non-English-speaking white guy was an interesting touch, as was the casting of Yosuke Eguchi as an ethnic Chinese gangster. By far the most confusing characters were Yamaguchi Tomoko and Watabe Atsuro, cast as some sort of foreign (US?)-trained counter narcotics operators. Obviously, such a "black" unit would not be politically viable in Japan, hence the presence of an American-accented squad leader and the exclusive use of (bad) English between Yama-chan and Watabe-kun. I realize that their main objective was to terminate Rianki's counterfeiting ring, but why would they do it by helping Yentowns scam millions of yen from cash machine owners? Don't even get me started on the impossibility of taking out a target on a moving train. Surely, Iwai Shunji's watched "La Femme Nikita" too many times, but even Luc Besson wouldn't have one of his characters pull off such an impossible objective. Overall, the movie was depressing, enlightening, sad, disturbing, and in some ways entertaining (Tomo-chan's scene with the anti-tank weapon was immensely funny). Did i like it? Well, yes.

A post-modern adult fairytale like this cannot shows up every year and even today, when I have already seen all of Shunji Iwai's films, I still have no clue about where did this one surface. It is fairly easier to comprehend ‘love letter' or ‘April story', based on a single good idea, or maybe a little more hard work and careful planning with ‘picnic', but there is no fixed procedure to follow in order to conjure up a desperate complex like this.

The hand-held camera movements and those documentary-like jumping shoots, which make some people uncomfortable in other Iwai's film, are more balanced with montage here. Nevertheless, it is the director's favorite way of seeing this world and had been intentionally deployed just as a reflection of personal disposition but not a obligation in a drama.

Note that it is vital to have all those cool figures, even the cameos, which is a test of originality almost all pseudo-filmmakers would fall short and, on the other hand, the audiences never fail to appreciate. However, unlike his contemporary Kitano, Iwai seems have been running out of sarcastic wits ever since then, or maybe just he was too much occupied by subtle tragedy-romance receiving enormous popularity among teenagers.Despite this, he remains one of the few promising film makers in new millennium Japan.

I'd seen the name Swallowtail Butterfly mentioned in quite a few places, always favourably. I either didn't know or couldn't remember the slightest thing about it, but decided to pick it up on an expensive whim.

Director Shunji Iwai has done a few movies that don't seem to get seen much in the west, but always draw praise when they do. I will certainly be looking out for his work in future, if Swallowtail Butterfly is a good representation of his talent.

Since I didn't know anything about the movie, and enjoyed it that way, I won't reveal too much. The main background to which the movie is set is the "Yentown". This is either the name that immigrant workers gave to the Japanese city to which they came looking for money, or the name given by the Japanese that rejected them to that class of people. It is also the name of the band that Shunji Iwai recruited for the movie, and the original name of the movie itself in Japan, just to make matters more confusing :)

At the start of the movie we see the corpse of a Chinese Yentown being handed over to the authorities. The other Yentown deny knowing her, and the 16 year old girl looking mournful particularly denies that she might have been her mother. This is untrue, but if nobody claims the body then the state will provide a funeral that her friends and relatives could not afford. The prospect of looking after the girl does not appeal to her mothers friends, so she is handed on from person to person until a prostitute called Glico finally takes pity on her.

The movie expands from this point in gradually widening circles, paced with a precision that would make King Hu proud. It's impossible to place the movie in one genre, but social-realism, coming of age drama, rockumentary and crime thriller all fit one part or another of the 2.5 hour running time. The whole movie is shot on hand-held cameras, sometimes in a dizzying documentary style, sometimes in a tense thriller style, sometimes in a gentle dream-like way. The use of filters and lighting, and a nice grainy film stock, all ensure that it looks wonderful throughout. The soundtrack is similarly wonderful from start to finish - both the orchestral background music of Takeshi Kobayashi and the flat out rock n' roll of The Yentown Band and their wonderful singer Chara (the new love of my life I think!).

The different tones of the movie that follow the shift in genre and the sometimes radical changes of scale that the narrative takes in are all blended skillfully, provoking a wide range of emotional responses. The performances are all excellent, and the characters very interesting and well defined.

In essence, this is basically a masterful film that shows extraodinary skill from Shunji Iwai as a director. Watching it is a reminder of just how far from the potential of the medium most movies fall. I look forward to following his career, wherever it might take him. It's such a shame that a movie that is such a work of art will probably be seen by a tiny audience in the USA, whilst brain-dead Hollywood "blockbusters" pack multiplexes in every town. I guess at least most people will never know what they're missing.