Butterfly Kiss
The Age
Thursday July 13, 2006
DVD REVIEWS: Butterfly Kiss, Hopscotch, 88 mins, MA, drama, 1995 ***?
A collaboration from the inventive and unpredictable team of director Michael Winterbottom and writer Frank Cottrell Boyce, whose joint enterprises include Welcome to Sarajevo, 24-Hour Party People and the current release A Cock and Bull Story. Their 1995 drama, Butterfly Kiss, is notable for the scary, charismatic performance of Amanda Plummer as Eunice, a young woman travelling up and down the motorways of northern England on a fierce quest. She's ostensibly looking for someone called Judith, but it becomes clear that there is more going on in this apparently aimless search: and when she doesn't find what she wants, she takes action in sudden and terrifying ways. A meek young woman called Miriam (a quietly impressive Saskia Reeves) is drawn to follow her, and to become a part of her murderous journey. This is a bleak, brutal, often confronting work that looks like a dark, crazed road movie, but takes some surprising detours: it turns out to be, in a disconcerting way, a film about extremes of love and religious belief.DVD extras: none
© 2006 The Age