An often breathtakingly original meld of raod movie, lesbian love story, psychodrama and black comedy, Butterfly Kiss wings in as the most spirited and original British picture since last year’s Shallow Grave. Cult status seems assured.
So wrote Variety’s reviewer of Michael Winterbottom’s thrilling and provocative first feature, which actually makes Shallow Grave look like a tired old morality tale in modern dress. No British film in long while has had the courage to embrace the madness of its wayward protagonists as director Winterbottom and writer Frank Cottrell Boyce manage here. Even more surprising, perhaps, is the fact that both writer and director Roddy Doyle’s Family, while Boyce has been a regular writer on Coronation Street. Appalled critics of Butterfly Kiss would probably argue that the greater freedom allowed in the cinema has gone to their heads. More open minded viewers will be delighted by the film’s sheer audacity.
A very convincing Amanda Plummer plays Eunice,