Atypical for David Cronenberg feature film 1993 "M. Butterfly". In his career, which until now is characterized by films about transformation, identity and blurring the boundaries of fantasy and reality, there is a film about the relationship between a French diplomat and a Beijing opera singer. Which doesn’t quite match Cronenberg’s past, but it’s still quite interesting. The film is based on a true story and it always adds an element of intrigue to the movie.
David Cronenberg may not be one of my favorite directors, but to me he is one of the most interesting and unique. He touches on difficult and daring topics and treats them in a way that is unsettling and emotional.
The film takes place during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s in China. But the real problems stem from the relationship between René Gallimar and his lover Son Liling, who take an unforeseen turn when you least expect it. The characters play wonderfully: Mrs. Butterfly is depicted as a cold-blooded and calculating person with no trace of human emotions. A kind of exotic black widow, and Renee is an obsessed white lover.
A cover of Eastern mysticism, the Chinese cultural and social origins of the time. Actors, scenery, costumes - all this is great. Cronenberg pays great attention to detail in his mise-en-scene, both in the incarnation of Beijing in the 1960s and in performances of the Beijing Opera. The film benefits from field shooting not only in Toronto, but also in China, France and Hungary. The scenery and locations are enough to take your breath away, and they are complemented by magnificent camerawork. In the night scenes there is a certain eerieness, which is a pleasant contrast. Cronenberg directs accurately and meticulously, perhaps in places too cautiously, and with a suitable sympathetic note. The script is really thought-provoking, it is well-intentioned and sincere. 'M Butterfly' touched me a bit and made me feel uncomfortable, which was obviously his goal. Sensitively depicted central relations and the complete opposite of the thesis of remoteness, and aspects of cultural differences are depicted quite tactfully.
It’s a story that requires more passion and emotion to be truly exciting. That's where the movie fails. However, the film is not a complete disappointment. Yeah, it's rough. It is not one of Cronenberg’s best or worst works, but it excels in its reputation for its many impressive elements and in my opinion it is at least a far cry from failure.
Horror master David Cronenberg seriously surprised fans in 1993, releasing the shocking melodrama “M. Butterfly”. Visually, the picture was infinitely far from the signature body-bugs of the Canadian, but the plot organically fit into his creative path. After all, the director has always investigated not only physical pathologies and mutations, but also dissected the dark souls and crazy heads of his characters. So “M. Butterfly” for a long time deceptively seems to be a traditional love story, but then in an instant it stuns the audience. And even more shocking is the fact that the film is made based on real events.
In the 1960s, a French diplomat met a local opera singer in Beijing. Sudden friendship quickly developed into an intimate relationship that led to the pregnancy of the actress. The Frenchman was so blinded by great love that he decided to divorce his wife and start a new family. That's just a small lie in the interracial novel was the reciprocal feelings of a Chinese woman, and a big lie - ...
To experience maximum surprise, you should not read the historical reference and detailed analytical analysis of the tape before viewing. It is quite difficult to guess the main trick, simply because it is almost impossible to imagine such a thing in real life. But believe it or not, it was a strange connection. And how much you accept it depends on the subjective view of the concept of “love”, which is not only evil, but also nightmarishly cruel.
Don’t expect dynamic and violent narratives. “M. Butterfly” is a contemplative picture, as a painfully bizarre dream, turning into a brutal reality. Undoubtedly, this is a highly artistic film, with brilliant works by leading actors, but perversely specific, in which there are no classical relationships that overcome many obstacles. Rather, Cronenberg’s film is a story of an inexplicable, soul-physical obsession that will delight some and possibly make others regret what they have seen.
6 out of 10
When the real is no longer what it was, nostalgia assumes all its meaning.
Jean Baudrillard
Once in an interview, David Cronenberg admitted that the plot of his “Videodrome” was born under the influence of fear. These words, which do not seem surprising, can easily be projected onto the entire work of the director, which in fact is the broadcast of Hoffman-Gogol horror before the infinitely multiplying matrices of a hallucinating civilization. His cinema is Bosch’s illustrations of the hell of hyperreality, where being itself disappears in the miasms of decay of an increasingly dehumanizing world. Although Cronenberg uses postmodern techniques in his paintings, he nevertheless can hardly be ranked among the apologists and ideologists of the “new era” – he is rather an ironic whistleblower, not devoid of even a kind of moralizing “from the opposite”.
The film “M. Butterfly”, based on the play of the same name by David Hwan, is chronologically located in the same row with the cult paintings “Lunch naked” and “Car Accident”. The world-famous story of the Japanese geisha Chio-chio-san - a young woman, deceived and abandoned by a European, transferred to the scenery of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, filmed in the calm colors of retro classics. But the realism of historical events and meticulousness in the reproduction of national color are just a veil of Maya, masking the changed forms of the inside out, deconstructed plot. A strange tale about the love of French diplomat René Gallimar to the singer of the Beijing Opera Song Ling is the reverse remains of a once beautiful and romantic fairy tale. As in the mentioned films, this is also transgression and ecstasy, but not due to narcotic or man-made psychosis, but from a severe syndrome of nostalgia.
Jeremy Irons is an accountant at the embassy. The average middle-class man, unburdened by the exquisites of culture... is worse than no one. He is bored in Beijing, bored in the service, bored to stay in this already familiar, devoid of colors life. And then he suddenly finds the woman of dreams, “his Butterfly”, and, as it seems to him, meets himself, breaks into something main and original: to true feelings, real life. Looking down, shyness, devotion, obedience, readiness for sacrifice and “death with honor” – all in it speaks of the distant and beautiful that has left the familiar world, but preserved at the level of genetic memory as a sign system or behavior model of the ideal anima. Like mantras, repeated words about the antiquity of the Chinese people, striving to live and love in the old way, about the hidden meaning of its traditions skillfully play out before Gallimar the mythological discourse of the East, since ancient times beckoning Europe with the eros of its incomprehensible secrets.
But this perfectly modulated image, which is transposed by the hero’s imagination to all spheres of life, is just a fake, a typical Bodilyar simulacrum, the same copy that hides the absence of the original. But such a substitution cannot be denounced, for the soul’s morbid dependence on exalted deception leaves no criteria for determining it. And the artful forgery gradually displaces the pattern or becomes its doppelganger - a theme raised by the director a few years earlier in Linked to Death ("Simulated Copies), or a later version of it in Tornator's Best Proposal. Cronenberg seems to play with the viewer, destroying mirages and immediately creating them again. “Only a man knows how a woman should behave,” says Song Ling, and in the next frame, the camera emphasizes carefully watching the gracefully and carefreely removed girl figure. “I am your slave,” her mouth whispers, and Gallimar no longer notices the disappearance of old China and the waves of support for the new regime storming Paris. For the dragonfly catcher that once meets the hero on the streets of Beijing has long slammed his cage with a naive and trusting insect inside.
The Cronenberg universe is a world where a person is completely and hopelessly determined, easily read and calculate, predictable and manipulated. But when the epiphany comes and the Matrix is suddenly lit up by the dark dungeon of Zion, the carriage is again turned into a pumpkin, the pages into lizards, and the beautiful stranger into a shameful snare, whose once worshipped features now inspire only an irresistible disgust. And the age-old question of who we truly love, a person or an image created by our imagination, is easily solved with a few words: “You are nothing compared to my Butterfly!” After that, it remains only with contempt to throw away the fragments of the soul of this unfamiliar and alien creature, together with its dreary and dim reality. And then - to put on the face of makeup, put on ceremonial clothes and finish the role (to perform the rite) to the end: to break through to the very "charmed shores and dalas" that can be seen in the ghostly half-darkness of a dark veil - to the "treasure of the soul", which has long been waiting for its hour. And then art will become life, the dream will come true, and the person will finally find his true identity. And if Kirillov Dostoevsky believed that he could become God, then only Madame Butterfly is enough for the hero of Cronenberg.
After all, the main thing is not history, but music is the immortal music of Puccini ... in eternity.
for Vinterriket
Politics, espionage and the subtlety of relationships
The Tony-winning play M. Butterfly, by David Henry Hwang, is based on a real-life event that happened to a French diplomat convicted of espionage in 1986. For 20 years, he loved a Chinese opera singer who turned out to be a spy. It would be fine just a spy, but the performer of the main party in the tragedy of the same name also turned out to be a man. When you watch a picture, you often get the impression that you are watching a theatrical production (it is staged on the acclaimed Broadway play).
From the master of letting out the guts, David Cronenberg do not expect to see a pleasant, soothing, love movie, which is the spy melodrama “M. Butterfly”. Special attention deserved the heroine, that's what acting skills mean! John Lawn, known to me for his role as the villain from “Shadow”, here is simply, unrecognizable, like a woman. Yes, Cronenberg is amazingly organized, nothing to say.
Also, Cronenberg aptly noted the difference between European and Far Eastern culture, in their different aspects, focusing on the very difference of traditions, established over millennia in the East, in comparison with the Western system of values. The difference between the sexes and the concept of love. Whatever I may say about the theme of love, but here the movie shows the opposite, fleeting passion and lust, without vulgarity and dirt, and aesthetically interesting with the delightful music of Howard Shore and Asian gallantry. By the way, the political situation in China, which took place during the “cultural Chinese revolution” Renee (Jeremy Irons) will reveal in all her glory gradually, as will his wife's mystery.
Artistic features also leave a pleasant feeling, Cronenberg approached the matter wisely, compared real documents, built the atmosphere of the 60s to the smallest detail, perfectly reflecting the communist ideas of the Chinese proletariat, paying attention even to the topic of motherhood. However, it was much more important for him to demonstrate a completely different, that very thin facet of romance and vice (somehow it turns out). After all, as a result, he came out of a sad story, from which comes more positive than negative, as it was in other works of the Canadian.
In stories of this kind, the main thing is the performance and beauty of the lines, and in this respect Cronenberg not only surprises, but also makes it clear that love is absolute, blind if it is sick. The final chord is Gallimar's monologue, and a few seconds later, applause is heard. This is what you should see with your own eyes, of course, not everyone will like it, but it only depends on your individual preferences and taste.
Because of your big back
You can't see a line.
What a back.
That's right.
Who is ahead of you, you can’t see.
And behind us, why should we know?
Mummy Troll "Girls - Emancipe"
Actually, even if a potential viewer reads the most malicious spoilers, still disappointment will not come, because already literally from the first frames the intrigue dissipates, unless of course you have minus 8 for each eye.
A good actor does not play a role, he gets used to the skin of his hero, passes his thoughts through his, and it is quite understandable that the director’s desire to use John Lawn, due to his numerous talents, including opera singing, but from the point of view of elementary aesthetics, this is an absolute failure.
In turn, Jerami Irons, who looks very convincing in the image of dry diplomats-accountants-teachers, under whose strict costumes, lives an insatiable demon of self-destruction, feeding on both the lowest emotions and instincts, and the most sublime in “M. Butterfly” does not show 10 parts of his talent.
To decide that Irons exactly for the year “Damage” (1992) – “M. Butterfly” (1993), lost his acting skills, and already in 1997 in “Lolita” again miraculously found him, is not possible.
However, in this film, Jeremy Irons seems to perform his role, makes surprised eyes, diligently plays a non-existent passion, portrays unbearable suffering, apparently the fault, heterosexual firmware. Irons, as throughout the story, the actor tortured to convey non-existent feelings without the slightest hint of realism.
“M. Butterfly” contains many ingredients for the recipe for a really worthwhile movie – it is a talented director, and a story based on real facts, and political vicissitudes against the background of personal drama.
And yet, the viewer, like agent 007, comes to the bar in the hope of getting his favorite signature cocktail, which Ian Fleming described as: vodka, vermouth, gin, lemon peel and olive, and director Cronenberg prepares this cocktail, but for some reason instead of olive in the glass is a green cucumber in the form of John Lawn.
And you can’t say anything – the cucumber is beautiful, and it crunches perfectly, but what does it do in a glass of martini?
So the famous phrase of Bond – “shake, but not mix”, as best suited to “M. Butterfly”, the viewer “stirred up” by the unusual nature of the plot, but the actors with all the script assigned to them mission simply can not “mix” with each other, acting as absolutely disparate elements.
Causal relationships are fragmentary. Banal is not clear why this hero Irons fell in love with the “heroine” Lone, the scene where Irons' eyes suddenly light up at the sight of Song Liling, looks more than unconvincing. In the subsequent narrative, it also remains a mystery the origin of such an all-consuming feeling on the part of René Gallimar.
In fact, the script of the film is clearly limping on one foot, since such an important part of it as dialogue is missing. Not only do the actors sluggishly portray love and passion, so at least verbally it was voiced, but no, meaningful dialogue in this film does not exist as a class.
The screenwriter is the author of the play on which the film is made. It begs the question whether the play itself did not go far from the script, or whether it was Hwang who wrote the script with his left heel under the blanket.
Then there are purely "technical" moments: the story of Gallimar and Song Liling, told in film format, suggests that Irons' hero is a clinical idiot or an opium drug addict with experience, perhaps both, since it is possible not to suspect the obvious, only in a super-mad state, nevertheless, Irons' hero looks more than adequate.
It is thought that Cronenberg clearly understudied the question of the sexual preferences of René Gallimar, the prototype of which is Bernard Bursico and approached the questions of reliability more than superficially.
And even if we abstract and imagine for a second that in some surreal reality, the option told in the film is possible, then at least Shi Paipu (the prototype of Song Liling) photos of which are freely available on the Internet, looks much more feminine than Lone, whose broad shoulders, and even against the background of tenuous Irons, are great distractions from the plot twists.
As a result: there are too many “white spots” in the film and obvious inconsistencies for a full-fledged plot and figurative perception, Cronenberg’s “M. Butterfly” is a caterpillar that is not destined to become a butterfly.
A completely unexpected move from Cronenberg. Accustomed to the transformations of bodies and consciousness that are an integral part of this director’s world, Madame Butterfly reveals the biographical history of the French diplomat. It's a drama about false love that breaks his life. The universe has a boomerang effect: once upon a time, just after the end of World War II, a young Japanese girl fell in love with an American sailor who took advantage of her vulnerability and, after a short time, with a light heart abandoned her. Then the girl from the betrayal of her beloved committed suicide. At the place of her death was erected a monument, the inscription on which read: Japanese women, never like Americans. This story began to make up legends not only in Japan itself, it became a symbol of treachery and betrayal of the West throughout the East. And China was no exception. The clash of two civilizations has become a stumbling block to this narrative.
René Gallimar, played by the brilliant Jeremy Irons, appears as a brazen, arrogant, but cowardly accountant of the French Embassy. He is a typical Westerner. The Eastern Chinese world, based on millennial traditions, seems to him completely alien, even wild, but at the same time Rene tries to treat it with understanding. After meeting the young opera diva Son Lilin, the diplomat begins to feel an unusual attraction to her. He was extremely attracted by the closedness and inaccessibility of Eastern women, their modesty and desire to serve a man. As they say, opposites attract. Carnal instincts are rapidly replaced by deep sincere feelings of love. Renee realizes he's never loved so much. He found his perfect woman.
But how would you react if you knew that your favorite woman was a man? Could you handle the shock that befell you? A diplomat who abandoned his wife, shattered his career and now learned that it was all for the love of a man. He was not afraid of prison or the absence of any future prospects. The only nightmare was the loss of Madame Butterfly. Even being in the same car as the Chinese, which made René’s life a fairy tale, Gallimar is still torn in doubt. He still loves the image of Son Lilin and cannot let her go. Seeing the true appearance of the opera diva, Rene, closing her eyes, remembers her facial features, skin, touch. It was all a lie. His whole life, all his feelings, are all lies.
An extremely frank and tragic story. Cronenberg once again masterfully penetrates into the human soul. It clearly shows the dividing line between east and west. This is especially noticeable when drunk Renee, literally, breaks into the house of the opera diva, on the way not forgetting to throw a cigarette butt on the doorstep. Such behavior in the East will not even occur to anyone. Traditions and strict rules are strictly observed by all residents. Even as Son poured tea on Gallimar in the living room, she said it could be dangerous. Eastern deceit against Western pragmatism. Two worlds that are not meant to be together.
8 out of 10
China, 1964. French diplomat René Gallimar listens in Beijing to Giacomo Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly, in which a Japanese woman falls in love with an American, and when he abandons her, commits suicide. Soon, Gillimar meets the languid oriental beauty Song Li Lin, just performing the opera part of Madame, and falls in love with her. The history of his fatal and fatal passion for the mysterious Chinese woman lasts for two decades. But intoxicated with feeling, Gallimar apparently forgot about the fate of Butterfly, who in real life turned out to be a spy. It's just a spy...
While the Canadian David Cronenberg filmed in 1991 the cult book of beatniks – “Naked Breakfast” by Burroughs, Roman Viktyuk sculpted in Russia his next scandalous play “M. Butterfly” based on the play of David Henry Hwan, by that time already marked by a number of prestigious awards (including “Tony”), and became a sacred thing for the vast gay diaspora. Two years later, Cronenberg also turned to this story, allegedly based on real events that happened to a French intelligence officer convicted of espionage only in 1986. The master of non-trivial horrors and psychophysiological anomalies decided to turn his face to the people and generally refused this time to use his usual horror-arsenal. Instead, Cronenberg demonstrated passion as another kind of mutation for which neither body nor gender is of any fundamental importance.
Jeremy Irons, the most elegant neurotic of world cinema of the 1990s, marked by the stigma of a true English gentleman, quite convincingly copes with the role of a disoriented Frenchman. Irons, who had already played in Cronenberg’s Deadly Bond (1988) two roles – twin brothers who had brainwashed a common mistress, alternately putting her to bed, now found himself in the role of a deceived character – a victim of his own feelings, which, as we know, is often blind. As in the previous work of Louis Malle, in the film “Damage” (1992), the hero of Irons again ruins his career for the sake of unsafe love.
And yet this time the film is mainly based on the skill of the Chinese actor John Lawn, who from the age of ten studied at the Hong Kong Beijing Opera Academy, where he studied dance, singing, acrobatics and martial arts. At the age of 18, he went to the United States and quickly found small roles in television and film. But the relative popularity came to Lawn only in 1985 after the release of "Year of the Dragon". And two years later he played the main role in “The Last Emperor” by Bernardo Bertolucci, after which, as they say, he woke up famous.
And yet, despite the impressive acting work, the film makes a dual impression: it seems that the legend is still fresh, but it is difficult to believe in it. Unlike the numerous stage incarnations of the play (the convention there is a completely different kind), including on Broadway, the film version of Cronenberg is somehow not very convincing. The more realistic nature of cinema unwittingly exposes the semi-fairytale plan: yet it is impossible to believe that in twenty years Gallimar has not recognized a man in a woman.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. If you like movies, after which, instead of sleeping, questions come to you one by one that have no answers, then this movie is for you. A delightful story of deception and betrayal, captivating both the depth of the lie and the depth of belief in its truth.
In fact, I knew in advance the main intrigue of the film - thanks to spoilers on the Internet. But that knowledge didn't change the shock, I would say, of its ending for a second. No, of course, I still have picky questions of a purely physiological nature — but, gentlemen, this story is based on real events, so it does not matter.
Special attention deserves the play of Jeremy Irons. My personal weakness for actors of such a plan and type does not negate the sensuality and subtlety of his talent. However, his usual role - a strong man is weak before his vices. Here, too, he is initially weak - isn't his domination of Butterfly petty at the same time as some insignificant colleagues are capable of touching food on his plate with impunity and insult? This demonstrative moment so vulgarized their story, reducing it to a theatrical romance, to the erotic play of a pseudo-master with a pseudo-abbey, compensation for unrealized fantasies about real power - in confirmation of both insignificant treason, and ridiculous drunken speeches, and the mocking kiss of the envelope - "you gave me your shamefulness."
So what's the bottom line? All life that takes place outside the walls of their theater breaks into cinematic reality only where it is necessary for the picture, the frame, inevitably for the plot. Everything else was left out - lots of unsaid stories about how and what happened in their lives before, after and between their meetings. None of this matters to the questions that remain in the end. Not that he hasn't solved its main mystery in so many years. Not how he broke up with his wife and gave up his career. Not where Son spent all these years, and why there is not a single hint of them in the frame, although not much has passed - two decades. No, it doesn't matter.
What do we love, internal or external? If the inner, and no disease, catastrophe or ugliness will not cause the lover to turn away from the object of his love, why did it so hurt Renee, who did not know or did not want to know about the true nature of Dream? If it's external, why hasn't reality destroyed his feelings for it? If, after all, it doesn’t matter, why hasn’t he been able or willing to admit it for so many years? And where in relation to Son Lilin to this man was the game, and where is the reality, and how, in the end, Butterfly carried all this weight?
And most importantly, for what? What was all this for? Is it not for the sake of finally acknowledging the nature of the victim before the end and enjoying the agony that is permitted? Was it all a long way for Rene to go?
In short, Cronenberg provided the viewer with an hour and a half of wandering in the darkness of other people's souls. And an infinite number in the labyrinths of their own. There must be answers out there somewhere. Good luck finding.
The work of extraordinary directors is often subjected to such careful analysis that it is almost impossible to add something new to what has already been said. So, for more than 40 years of career, the style of David Cronenberg, master of monstrous mutations and deviations, was dismantled on tissues and organs. But among his works there are those that remain in the shadow of more popular films, although they deserve no less attention. Perhaps the most unknown picture of the Canadian director, if you do not take into account the debut works, which give madness and cheapness, can be considered “M. Butterfly”. The film about a French diplomat and Chinese singer was made at a time when Cronenberg was just beginning to move from bodily horrors to dissection of the human soul, and therefore can seem restrained and atypical. But the usual abominations are fully compensated by much more terrible torments of the soul.
She was his secret, his love, his tragedy. The film is based on a play by David Henry Hwan, in turn, based on a shocking real story, which in the reading of Cronenberg became even more tragic. Diplomat René Gallimar, quickly moving up the career ladder and yearning for Beijing, stranger to him, meets a mysterious woman with a stirring low voice - Son Lilin, as if born for the image of Madame Butterfly. She seems like an ideal worthy of high love, but Chinese silk hides much more, and the relationship of the characters is far from simple. Cronenberg robs love of its divine nature. For René, the theater actress is not a dream woman, but a slave, ready to die for him, like the heroine of the opera of the same name Puccini, whose name he calls her. The hero is guided not by feelings, but by a desire to possess, an attraction mistaken for love. Sleep, perhaps the most famous heroine of the director, often determining a woman's secondary role, pursues more complex goals.
Cronenberg, who dreamed of studying insects in his youth, now explores people in his films. Each of the two heroes is a butterfly with ragged wings, an unhappy Madame Butterfly, crippled by love. This picture is another requiem of dreams, cynically destroyed by reality. Although René’s motives are far from noble, the essence of his love is light, not darkness. He believes in his beloved, for whom he is ready to give everything he has. The hero lives in a paper-fragile fictional world where he is loved and loves, does not want to notice the secrets hidden very close. This is a romantic story, behind which lies the real madness, the painful relationships of flawed people.
“M. Butterfly” accurately reflects the spirit of the era of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the entire last century, saturated with fear and imaginary threats that poison even love. The images of Son and Rene reveal the eternal conflict of East and West. A diplomat could be a link between the two worlds, but he does not try to understand the other country and get closer. Having a Chinese woman does not mean understanding China. Cronenberg does not go into a blind image of the East, his film is not replete with oriental symbolism, like Imou paintings. One of the few bright features is the colorful Chinese theater.
In M. Butterfly, Cronenberg uses a limited number of funds. A minimum of bright characters are just a couple of main characters showing the full range of emotions. The restrained color scheme is only passion and death, blood and darkness, red and black. The picture develops slowly, sometimes even sluggishly, until it breaks through with a terrible, deafening finale, reminiscent of the earlier “Bound to Death”. Here, the horror of the soul reaches its limit, and the pain of the heroes feels like their own. Both Renee and Son in less than two hours of screen time experience all the agonies of the unfortunate Cio-Cio San, who can only powder her face and put on bright clothes. Pick up a sharp dagger to meet your destiny once and for all.
Somerset Maugham said that until he went to China, he could not find a suitable setting for his Painted Veil. Much more bizarre story of the French diplomat René Gallimard, for many years and did not dare to guess that the “terrible secret” masterfully does not give to the end, his beloved Son Lilin, scenery did not have to look for. It happened in China, China was around, was part of history. Looking between the lines of the libretto - sleeves-rivers, porcelain smoothness of the skin, hieroglyphic mystery of the features. Anxiety and tight - cyclists on narrow dark streets, piled into the mud costumes of the Beijing Opera, the gleam of fire on the young faces of the Hongweibin.
The mystery of love and the sting of treason. Cheating in this story really is, she has flabby skin and saggy breasts, it means nothing. But love... with love is more difficult. Let each couple kiss, and the other just lipstick, love story is still a story of two, the development of relationships. Butterfly lacks the identity of the person who could reciprocate. Taking as the basis of the original play the biography of the spies, David Hwang deliberately turns away from him, combining the accuracy of details with numerous omissions. Lilin’s dream remains a mystery, a mirror that reflects other people’s dreams, not allowing you to see what lies behind a thin layer of silver amalgam. In the emotions on this face, it is impossible to doubt: a timid need, a slow fever. But if everything is a lie, isn’t that a lie? If everything is half true, where do you draw the line? Even at the very end, when the clothes are removed and the illusions dispelled, we will never know what all the words and caresses were worth, whether he gave anything but satisfaction from a well-played role, the one with whom he had to go to bed on behalf of the party, this old ugly feminist, for whom Diva-Lilin is a corruption and class enemy. Two moments of sincerity: arrogance and irony in the first meeting, silent sobs in the last. The checkpoints of relationships, and between them the mystery.
Butterfly’s emphasis on the absence of M. Butterfly in this story, however, is not obvious to its true hero, whose mania becomes the object of research for Cronenberg. René Gallimar loves an imaginary woman and, not caring at all for the resemblance, “puts” her on the first person who turns up, as the actor puts a doll on his hand. Already in the third meeting, clutching white silks to his chest, burrowing his face in the dark sandalwood-smelling hair, he begs - not "give yourself to me," but: "Be my Butterfly." And, as is typical for the director, there is not a grain of romance in these words. They are broken, obsessive, unspoken and perhaps unconscious desires inspired by Puccini’s opera. Love me, worthless, unworthy of your sight. Be my slave. Love me, endure betrayal (the appearance of sagging breasts, as we see, is not accidental). Die for me... At this moment, the viewer is inevitably overtaken by the Pygmalion search syndrome, and predictable lofty thoughts about the conflict of dreams and reality pretty adorn an already beautiful sensual film. But let's leave Pygmalion to his Galatea, let's leave Monsieur Gallimard to his idea-fix, with it he will not disappear, no matter how much blood spills into a jar of rice powder. The collapse of the system is impossible, there is no way out of the theater, in extreme cases, you can simply swap roles. Another interesting thing is: if this is a dream, then why exactly such, why exactly slavish humiliation, defamation of love, bacchanalia of feelings, in which tantrums are no less than passions?
At the beginning of the film, the hero's wife, talking about life in India and Africa, will add: "It's not like this here." China is the answer, the key. It is not clear whether the director intended this effect, but during the viewing it seems that it is about something more than the pathology of private love. All the staff at the French embassy look helpless and lost in this country, impenetrable, elusive. At the performance of the national theater, or at another, fiery, performance of the Beijing streets, they are strangers trying to guess the meaning of what is happening on the faces of the audience. Fear and aggressive arrogance, world-changing cables, which have as much truth as Son Lilin sees: perhaps - everything, perhaps - nothing. Here it is difficult to feel white, it is difficult not to lose pride in the face of ancient culture, not to drown in the quagmire of someone else’s cunning and own ignorance. Renee, an ordinary accountant, a loser, thirded by colleagues as the weakest, breaks first. Not just a perfect woman. An illusory world in which he, while remaining a "nothing," can be a "master" and a "devil." In which Lilin, embodying China for him, without losing his importance, will fall prostrate. In which Europe and America will come to Asia, and she will dutifully and voluptuously lie under the caterpillars of tanks, dying of love.
The '60s. An employee of the French diplomatic service in China Gallimar (Jeremy Irons) at the performance of the Beijing opera "Cio-Cio-san" falls in love with the diva of the theater Son Lilin (John Lone). Between them, a complex and very exotic love relationship is established, reminiscent of the story of Madame Butterfly.
Differences in cultures and worldviews make Gallimar and Son Lilin’s novel unique: what separates them makes them closer to each other at the same time. There's a lot of misunderstanding in their relationship, just like in the movie itself, and that creates a sense of mystery. And Son Lilin has a fatal secret, only blinded by love, Gallimar does not notice the obvious - thick makeup lies not only on the faces of the actors of the Beijing Opera, he is on the entire Chinese reality of the victory of the People's Revolution. However, not only Gallimar, who is obsessed with passion, but also the viewer will have the opportunity to marvel at the brutal treachery of the East closer to the final. In this sense, David Cronenberg's Butterfly reminded me of The Sixth Sense. Naita Shyamalan: the viewer is presented with everything necessary and sufficient to foresee the final, the trump cards are open on the table, but the outcome is mind-blowingly unexpected. But Song Lilin, as much as possible, honestly warned Gallimar that there was little in common between the Japanese Butterfly and the Chinese.
For greater historical and ethnographic authenticity, the film was shot in Beijing and Paris, the picture is replete with the smallest unimagined details. Against their background, the love of the heroes is shown bare-shaped, stingy, it seems to be covered with a veil. In general, for Irons Gallimar - a kind of similarity played later in "Lolita" Humbert: he is not bad in fact a person touched by love and vice. What's left of love when the masks are removed and the makeup is erased? The real person is never what we think he is. What do we really love: the person himself or his image created by our imagination? And what tragedy will it be for us if the image is unceremoniously debunked? Fate knows how to joke evil, and with all cruelty and uncompromising, it will force Gallimar to test his feelings for truth.
The film is well worth watching. He doesn’t have enough dynamics, but brilliant Irons, almost a documentary image of Beijing of the 60s and an unexpected ending are huge pluses.