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Alas de mariposa More at IMDbPro »

4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
"Alas de mariposa" potently challenges the viewer with the re-examination of the female in a patriarchal society., 11 November 2000
Author: dlkohrs (dlkohrs@ilstu.edu) from Normal, Illinois

Although we live under the premise that equality between men and women has consistently improved over the past three decades, the potent film "Alas de mariposa" ("Wings of the Butterfly") presents a startling contrast to this notion. Set in the Basque region of Spain, the director Juanma Bajo Ulloa portrays a modern family in the 1990's who is consumed with the obsession to have a son to carry on the family name. Ironically, it is the mother, Carmen, who is determined to continue the patriarchal dominance rather than the submissive father, Gabriel, as a result of living under the shadow of her father's resentment. While focusing on the repression of the feminine identity and the subsequent violence that is imposed upon the young daughter Ami, the spectator can draw parallels to the repression of the Basque independence and identity in the Northeast section of Spain.

While using revealing chiaroscuro lighting, "Alas de mariposa" contains various symbolic scenes that augment the patriarchal ideology through closed frames which denote the trapped family. The opening scene of the movie summarizes the rejection of the female throughout the film when the grandfather refuses to accept the birth of his granddaughter. Preceding scenes of the storm, ruination of the family painting that Ami draws, Carmen's rejection of Ami during her pregnancy and even the egg that breaks during the parallel montage of Ami's fall represents the broken possibility of life. The only moments in which Ami, the daughter, feels free and uninhibited is through the creation of her art, yet ironically the only time she can draw the butterfly wings is between the death of her grandfather and the birth of her little brother. The butterfly wings seem to symbolize her momentary freedom and liberty, while the skeletal frame represents her lack of freedom.

The vicious ideological circle in "Alas de mariposa" slowly rotates around the father's idealist attitude, the mother's forceful dominance, the daughter's rejection, the pregnancies and hurtful actions. The entire film encourages the viewer to evaluate the remaining patriarchal holds still remnant in society. "Alas de mariposa" is a compelling movie that questions the force of ideologies, portrays the victims and offenders of these philosophies, and the effect that they have on freedom and liberty. It is an eye-opening movie that challenges the audience with the re-examination of creeds that society imposes on the individual as well as the group.

3 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
Grim Tragedy, befittingly photographed, 9 March 2003

Author: Keith F. Hatcher from La Rioja, Spain

The Basque film director, Juanma Bajo Ulloa, is a difficult person to come to terms with. Doubly so, as I have had the bad luck of seeing his films in reverse order. After a hilarious but rather senseless `Airbag' (qv), I was greatly attracted by the sombre, almost poetic `La Madre Muerta' (qv), and finally have managed to see `Alas de Mariposa', mostly because my attention fell on Silvia Munt as lead actress. The fact that Fernando Valverde is playing opposite her, also helped. What I did not expect is that both girls playing the younger Amy (Laura Vaquero) and the adolescent Amy (Susana García), would steal the show from them. With intelligent patience, especially with Laura Vaquero, Bajo Ulloa achieves some memorable scenes.

Greatly aided by some extremely delicate photography playing with natural light so as to achieve a `claro-oscuro' result which is almost as if it were filmed in black and white. Bingen Mendizábal's dark music lends itself appropriately to the film's development, being almost textural in its sombreness.

For the story is grim: a harsh tragedy, at times verging on brutal pathos.

Footnotes:

1) For Spanish learners this film should not be too difficult as the dialogues are fairly easy to follow as the accents are neutral, though there are some softly-spoken parts at times.

2) In no way should under 18s be allowed to watch this film. I hate to be a censor, but the content of this film makes such a statement rather obligatory. If it were simply a case of explicit sex-scenes – there aren't any – I would say nothing.

A home full of nightmares., 12 December 2000
Author: (iescat@ilstu.edu) from Normal, Illinois

Alas de Mariposa is about a 6-year-old girl, Ami that lives in a home full of nightmares. Her mother, Carmen, has an obsession to give birth to a male. She wants to carry on the patriarchal name of her husband, Gabriel. For that reason, Carmen does not treat Ami with the love and respect that she needs and deserves. She often ignores Ami and tells her to leave her alone. Ami's father, Gabriel, is a hardworking garbage man that tries to keep the family together. He often tries to comfort Ami, since her mother will not. Ami's butterfly drawings as a child, turn into dark, skeletal remains of a butterfly as she grows older. Gabriel finally get fed up with all of the arguing and tension in the home and asks Ami to leave the house. This movie is full of terror for Ami--involving murder,hatred,and rape. You will notice the rejection of a female in this film and how Ami is victimized by the society's ideologies. Juanma uses several strategies to create this "dark and tragic" environment.

Amanda must battle between being a normal child and the struggle to keep the relationship with her parents after tragic events., 7 November 2000
Author: kilomaster (kilomaster@yahoo.com) from Chicago, USA

Alas de Mariposa is a tragic film that deals with the hardships of a little girl, Amanda, and the struggle to identify and relate to her parents. After a terrible tragedy, Amanda must cope with the consequences and piece together her life in order to survive the rejection of her mother and grandfather, and hold on to the weak connection to her father.

0 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Attention Parents!!, 13 February 2003

Author: Michael DeZubiria (miked32@hotmail.com) from Luoyang, China

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Butterfly Wings is a heavily symbolic film that focuses on one family as representative of the society in which they live. The film opens with a hospital scene in which a clearly frustrated grandfather receives the news that he has a new granddaughter, not a grandson. His daughter in law has yet again been unable to provide his son with an heir, reflecting the favoring of boys in the society in Spain at the time of the film. This scene sets up the stage for the rest of the film, which presents a picture of the home life of one family, which is influenced by their society. The movie is an exploration of a patriarchal society through female central characters.

The daughter born at the beginning of the film is Amy, a little girl with dark hair and startling blue eyes who is neglected by her mother, Carmen, who seems to want an heir for her husband even more than he does. Carmen eventually gets pregnant again, and is upset because she is afraid that she will have another girl. It is significant here that the grandfather was introduced as the one who is strictly following the traditions of the patriarchal society in which they live, and then the mother continues this strictness even more than the father does. Indeed, the father plays a fairly minor role in the film, if only because he is so complacent about the gender of his children. Rather than being desperate to have the more socially acceptable male child, he accepts whatever gender they get as a blessing, as God's will.

(spoilers) When the mother has the next child, however, it is a boy, and this is where all the real trouble starts. Amy's mother is so elated that she has had a boy that she gives him all of her attention, not even paying any attention to Amy even when she is literally bleeding from her head. This is the major turning point in the film, where the damage has been done to Amy by her mother, and her consciousness takes a turn for the worst, which is most clearly evident in a comparison between the butterflies that she drew and made up to this point in the film and those that she makes for the rest of the movie.

There is a great dream sequence soon after the son is born where Carmen dreams that Amy picks the baby up out of the crib and drops him out the window to his death far below. There is soon a situation where Carmen finds the baby gone, Amy is out on the balcony that she dropped the baby off of in the dream, and Carmen freaks out thinking that it has come true. She starts beating Amy, who takes it silently, and then Gabriel, the father, walks in the room carrying the baby and asks what's going on.

Carmen's fate is pretty much sealed at the point where Amy smothers the baby, imitating something she saw on TV, if I remember correctly. This is the point where parents should really pay attention, because Carmen's rough parenting style combined with the oppressive patriarchal society in which the family lived led to the rejection of Amy as a member of the family, her desire to escape into television, and her ultimate effort to get rid of the new baby so that she can be noticed again. Amy smothers her little brother, and Carmen begins to go insane.

It is significant that the only time that we ever see Amy smile as a young girl is when her little brother squeezes her finger, right before she smothers him. She did not do this maliciously out of anger or hatred for her brother, she was too young for that, she didn't realize the gravity of what she was doing. All she knew was that this was something that her mother loved more than her, and it caused her to be ignored. She probably felt that if she got rid of it, her mother would be mad at her for a while and then things would go back to the way they were before.

Amy's life is packed with tragedy from the moment we meet her, as an unwanted little girl. She has an abusive mother, was born into a society that looks down on females, she unknowingly murders her baby brother, frequently attempts suicide when she gets old enough to realize what kind of life she is stuck in, has to care for both her father (who has been rendered paralyzed and silent) and her mother, who is completely insane by the end of the movie. Not only that, but she has been forced into this motherly role, which is forced on women anyway in the society that she lives in, but she doesn't even have any children or even companionship of her own. She is stuck caring for her debilitated parents, and even the fact that she is pregnant, which is the only thing that symbolizes any hope for the future, is not a very bright point because she is pregnant with the baby of a rapist.

But the important thing is that Amy is presented as a strong character, or at least a resourceful one. She attempts suicide several times, noted by the numerous scars on her forearms, and she manages to fail at killing herself, but she steals food when she goes grocery shopping so that she can save up the grocery money to escape the house where she was raised. Unfortunately, she took over caring for her parents before she gets a chance to leave (or, rather, right when she DOES get a chance to leave, which she decides not to do simply because her mother calls her `daughter,' quite possibly for the first time in her life).

Given the fact that Amy failed to commit suicide (which is a failure at a dishonorable task), she ironically gains our respect by stealing to save money to better her own life. The mark of the intelligent mind is the ability to hold conflicting opinions about the same person or subject and still be able to function, which is something that has also been done in recent films like Insomnia and, more importantly, Monster's Ball. This film does that in several different ways as described above, particularly in the character of Amy, whose life is a picture of the oppression of the patriarchal society that she was born into.

0 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
The silent scream, 29 November 2000
Author: Jaime Orrego (jaorrego@hotmail.com) from Normal, IL

An excellent film by Basque director Juanma Bajo Ulloa. It is a film in which he presents the reality of the Basque Country as the `unwanted child' within a family. The daughter, Ami represents the Basque Country in the movie, the father represents France, and the mother represents Spain. The film also brings the audience to the discovery that the explosion of violence on the part of Ami is no more than an answer to the lack of love that she has from her parents. The father wants to be affectionate, but he just gives her the trinkets that he finds in the street, while the mother just rejects her because she has another son whom she prefers. The rejection of Ami's family also can be seen when Ami needs them and she called them requesting aid, but in first instance her mother does not put care to her call, and in another one, his father did not run enough to be able to help her.

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