A film about Western imperialism and the cultural revolution, David Cronenberg-style!

This film implies that America's disastrous escalation of the Vietnam war was because of one horny French diplomat whose affair with a Chinese opera singer led him to project his own fantasy of the exotic orient and Asian submissiveness into his intelligence briefings. There's a lot more going on in this one. A brutal and gut-wrenching look at how much of what we regard as love between men and women is an artifice that each person builds out of the other.

"You are all here because you do not know how to dig into the flinty soil of China and discover its revolutionary future."

We have induced this dysmorphia with our aggressive privilege, our delusion, and our occasional delight in taking what we want when it suits us, only to be seduced, consumed and finally abandoned by the power and potential of this transformation.

"He was very responsive to my ancient Oriental ways of love, all of which I invented just for him."

Only a Pisces could have made this - love as a political weapon lmao

The final minutes hold the key to all of Cronenberg's cinema.

Only a man knows how a woman should act

18th Cronenberg, my 3rd tonight for his 78th bday. Chef's kiss, you King.

"It's not the story, it's the music."

Recently got to see Cronenberg's The Fly again, and was struck by how romantic and beautiful it is, despite the monster movie trappings. Here he does something even more sumptuous and mysterious, and I got almost as swept up in it as I did with The Fly - which makes sense because in broad strokes the two aren't really so different after all. They're both about arrogant men who get transformed into something terrifying, and also like The Fly, The Butterfly is only terrifying depending on your perspective.

Not your usual Cronenberg movie. Jeremy Irons and John Lone fall in love in 1960's China, except Irons thinks Lone is a woman. It's a true story as well. A bit slow but it's well made and you can't help but keep watching to see where it goes.

Bajo el microscopio cronenbergesco, una muestra de cómo el deseo desenfrenado puede ser el catalizador de una mutación. Visto en el macro, una muestra del colonialismo como manifestación de una mutación.

Jeremy Irons en los últimos 30 minutos se deteriora como brundlefly en cámara rápida. Es una de las cosas más tristes que he visto en mi vida.

Este era uno de los huecos que me faltaba llenar en la filmografía Cronenberg. No tenía idea que fuera un hueco tan grande.

i live for jeremy's nails

i need whoever wrote this screenplay immediately executed because never in my fucking life have i seen something as shit as this. there’s the impossibly terrible dialogue that somehow attempts to criticise, but instead perpetuates, western imperialism and chinese stereotypes. like hong sang soo’s turning gate but the imperial fetishist play is what’s being re-enacted.

the relationship between jeremy irons and john cho is easily amongst the most disgusting and transphobic shit i have seen in my life. seeing john cho on their knees in the police van pleading to jeremy iron literally made me see red. “butterfly”? get fucked. i love cronenberg but there’s no way to justify this pure brain rot.

watch tsui hark’s peking opera blues instead.

Atypical but excellent Cronenberg, reminiscent of the last emperor and dead ringers in light of duality in the Personas.
The movie is genuinely poetic, cinematography excellent but felt a bit hasty in its final twist.
Don't understand where all hate comes from!

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

I see films very often by the directors themselves, I follow the entire filmographies, I "study" that director and I try to find the flaw to appreciate him more. I see that after the 80s, Cronenberg let himself go into films completely out of all his schemes, or rather, very great films, like this one, but not at all in his style, I understand versatility, but I don't find a common thread with his works previous.
Excluding that, this was one of the few of Cronenberg's that I hadn't watched yet, and I think the film is immersed, the film isn't just a romantic film, a film that revolves around the word "to love", to love the very idea of love to the point of idealizing love, in an extreme passion that will lead the protagonist to lose contact with reality.
A film that was born on the illusion of something to be discovered yet.

این قدر لطافت و احساس و در نتیجه یکنواختی با گروه خونی کراننبرگ و بیننده اش سازگار نیست و وقتی هم که بالاخره ردی از سینمایش دیده می شود، به پایان ماجرا رسیده ایم و کار از کار گذشته :(

Have nothing clever or insightful to say about this except for, David Cronenberg simply can’t miss and whatever happened to Jeremy Irons?

"Only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act."

Cronenberg's first real reach outside of horror and it's still quite a trip. Essentially the ultimate catfishing, a French diplomat falls for a Peking opera singer (unaware that performers are traditionally men) and their affair last for twenty years until the true intention of their encounter is forced into light. There's a wide supporting cast, but this movie is pretty much all Jeremy Irons and John Lone pulling you into what can only be expected trajedy. Pretty practical pace, my only real stub is that I wish the opera scenes were more stimulating in contrast to the impoverished reality of Beijing under the developing PRC.
Highly recommended.

A fascinatingly confusing movie: Irons playing a Frenchman in a Broadcast British accent for one. There's whether or not the audience are meant to be surprised by Song Liling's unveiling/how much emphasis Cronenberg meant to place on their "passing", & the wobbly line of critiquing Orientalism (the white man relying on and exploiting a fantasy) and relying on it (the Asian temptress fooling a man using her sexual wiles). The framing of a (potential?) trans character as a "deceiver" sort of undoes the work the film puts in to unravel harmful tropes in other regards. I'm not quite sure what M. BUTTERFLY is trying to convince us *of* but I feel confident calling it unconvincing