M. Butterfly (1993)

reviewed by
Serdar Yegulalp


M. Butterfly (1993)
A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp
(C) 1997 by Serdar Yegulalp

CAPSULE: A strange, off-center treatment of a very odd footnote to history that works about half the time.

David Cronenberg is capable of making a bad movie, but never quite capable of making a boring one. M. BUTTERFLY is a good substantiation of that theory, a consistently interesting, watchable and tasteful, but not quite successful, movie about one of the oddest love affairs ever recorded. Read no further if you would rather discover more on your own.

Rene (Jeremy Irons) is a French diplomat assigned to China in the mid-60s. He is unsure of himself and his position, and doesn't consider his ignorance of the culture a handicap. Then he meets Song Liling, a Chinese opera singer -- they have a great bit of dialogue over her choice of "Madame Butterfly" as her aria of choice at a government function -- and an erotic fascination he didn't even know exist is stirred up for this woman. Except that she's not a woman, but ... a man. She is, however, a very good caricature of a woman -- a contrivance created by a man, designed to work as a spy.

The movie makes a great deal about the fact that even the two of them in a room, pouring tea for each other, is dangerous. "Everything I do has implications," Song whispers. In fact, the movie makes everything they do so top-heavy with implications that it often forgets there's a story to tell. It gives us many of the more explicit details of how Song concealed her biology from her lover, but they only make Rene's self-delusion seem even odder. For instance, based on what we see, Song only allows Rene to have anal sex with him -- but then announces that she's pregnant. Rene is overjoyed instead of perplexed. Surely he can't be that ignorant? No, but maybe he can be that self-deluded. But...

Well, if the movie's intention is to show how deeply Rene's self-delusion runs, it doesn't quite manage it. It shows him being promoted at his job and using many of Song's own half-baked aphorisms as some kind of insight into the "Eastern mind", or something -- and then when he loses his job and goes back to Paris, continuing his self-deception when Song manages to secure a visa to Paris as a cultural exchange student (a development I found strange in the light of the fact that the last time we saw her, she was in a re-education camp). And when he denounces the man over the illusion at the end, it's stilted and unconvincing.

Jeremy Irons is the perfect actor for the role of Rene, but he has been mishandled somehow. He's only really proper in the beginning, as the meek accountant who doesn't know what he's getting into, but when he swoons over Song, he becomes strangely hammy. There's no real sense that he's got a passion for this woman; he looks like he's acting, even as an actor.

John Lone as Song gives us a very credible woman for most of the movie, but she's got a weird acerbicness, a self-deprecation at the core of the character that we have to ascribe to self-hatred of some kind, because the movie never gives us any other real explanation.

M. BUTTERFLY, as I said before, is not a bad movie. But there are too many ways it fails to make it a good one. We get lots of background information about China at the time, including a few functional details about the Cultural Revolution, but not enough real insight into how a man like Rene could deceive himself. There's a couple of canned speeches at the end of the movie about how Rene loved the illusion more than any reality, but they stand out like broken fingers, not attached to anything.

In the end we're left with a technically excellent, and watchable, but not very satisfying curiosity. Cronenberg has always specialized in a kind of clinical detachment in his movies, even when the most ghastly subject matter is in focus. Sometimes this works (DEAD RINGERS, CRASH), and sometimes, like in M. BUTTERFLY, it keeps us from getting any real subjective insight. Okay, he loved the fantasy more than the reality -- but why? I guess the answer will require a more daring movie.

Two and a half out of four folding fans.
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