fedor8 Review of Butterfly Kiss

Butterfly Kiss (1995)

An absurd account of a lesbian love that grows as fast as the pile of corpses surrounding it.

[4 January 2007]

Two lesbians, one totally insane with the whole spectrum of mental illness, and the other a borderline idiot, drive around England aimlessly, while helping decrease its population. But their journey isn't the only pointless and aimless thing - the film is, too. The movie has absolutely no point to make; it's just there. Plummer and Reeves are good, and the film is solidly directed, but the underlying basis of their characters isn't revealed, and this especially goes for the Plummer the killer. We are not given any background information about Plummer, not even when her spree-killing started. The fact that she is insane just isn't enough; a little background, or at least hints and clues to it, would have helped. The makers of the film clearly don't know what this is about (or haven't succeeded in making it clear at all). Plummer's character is highly unrealistic and totally unrepresentative of female mass murderers; when operating alone, female serial killers usually use poison, or a less violent method to kill (a gun, for example). It is highly unusual, to say the least, that they roam the roads smashing people's heads in. The fact that Plummer is extremely sloppy about when and where she kills - and the fact that she wants to be caught - would suggest that it's highly unrealistic that she wasn't caught earlier (this is Western Europe, after all, not the Ukraine). The film is definitely not for children, or people easily shocked; the "body metal" that Plummer wears is unlike anything I have come across in a film before. The soundtrack, occasionally even cheerful, is usually totally inappropriate; it often serves as an instrument to sentimentalize the lesbian relationship. However, no sane viewer is going to be the slightest bit touched about their "romance" - Plummer is killing innocent people, frchrissakes! Who cares about her "love-life"?! But considering that Michael Winterbottom directed it - it's superb. Just check out his other "masterpieces", like "9 Songs"...