Click here to copy URL

M. Butterfly

1993

David Cronenberg

Jeremy Irons, John Lone, Barbara Sukowa, Ian Richardson ...

6.7

3,519

Romance. Drama In 1960s China, French diplomat Rene Gallimard falls in love with an opera singer, Song Liling - but Song is not at all who Gallimard thinks.

	Author	Review
United States	Janet Maslin The New York Times	"As idiosyncratic as Mr. Cronenberg's work always is, is sometimes too flat and ambiguous for its own good (...) But with his sharp, deliberate images of human nature at its most extreme, [he] has not lost his power to disturb."	NEU
United States	Chuck Bowen Slant	Awfully stodgy and theoretical (...) this tale of sexual obsession is dead from the waist down."	NEG
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"[It] does not take hold the way the stage play did. Perhaps the camera is too cruelly realistic (...) Perhaps it is Lone's voice, so low and monotonous. Perhaps it is two closing scenes... (…) Rating: ★★½ (out of 4)"	NEU
United States	Owen Gleiberman Entertainment Weekly	"Cronenberg directs this doomed romance in the same flat, claustrophobic, night-of-the-zombies style he employed in 'Naked Lunch' (...) [It] comes close to suggesting that heterosexuality is itself a construct, an illusion."	NEG
United Kingdom	Kim Newman Empire	"Although the puzzling relationship between Irons and Lone does deserve much attention, the film is set in an important historical period and yet several events are just skipped over as if they don't even register (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"	NEU
United States	Todd McCarthy Variety	"This butterfly just doesn't fly. Icy, surprisingly conventional and never truly convincing, David Cronenberg's screen version (...) gets all dressed up in fancy threads but goes nowhere"	NEG

Return to movie

We encourage you to check the reviews' original sources. Intellectual property rights of these reviews belong to their authors and/or the correspondent media from which they have been extracted. If you'd like to help us to add more reviews to your favorite movies, just send us a message.