M. Butterfly

Saw M. Butterfly, a film based on the play of the same title.  It follows a French diplomat who falls in love with a diva of the Chinese opera in proto-communist China.  She takes advantage of his love to steal state secrets.  This is a reversal of the classic Madame Butterfly opera, which depicts the perfect, stereotypical submissive oriental woman.  Here that trope is subverted - the seduction becomes a trap and the masculine conqueror is himself conquered.

There's a fairly major twist which deepens and complicates all of this however.  It's obvious if you know anything about Chinese opera and in this film they don't go out of their way to hide it, but it's really why I wanted to see this film and it's a prerequisite to all of the things I'd like to say about it.

So, here's the rest of the review in white font.  There's a lot of it.  Highlight to read, as usual:

The Chinese opera diva is of course a man.  This makes the theme of deception deeper and more troubling.  It leads to one of the killer lines of the film, when the diplomat says "I loved a woman who was created by a man."  In the context of the film, the diplomat is talking about the female persona of the opera singer, but it is equally true of the submissive Madame Butterfly archetype which is itself an invention of male writers and artists, inventing the ideal woman who never was.

But then again we now start running into trouble with the plot of the film.  The film is set in the 60s, when transexuals were unheard of.  The nature of opera singer's sexuality is left semi-ambiguous.  He may even be cis and straight.  Now look at my words in the first paragraph: the crafty opera singer "traps" the diplomat with his beauty.  This is a cruel way to talk about what may the doomed, impossible love of a gay man (or perhaps a trans woman) for a close-minded man in an intolerant age.

The film suggests in the end that the opera singer really did love the diplomat, and that helps some, but there's so much manipulation in the relationship that the opera singer still feels predatory to me.  The film was made in the 90s and I think is somewhat Problematic in this day and age, but then again ... then again ... there's something just so neat and satisfying and queer about the arrogant man wanting a submissive woman to obey his orders and stand, naked and exposed, before him only only to be exposed and humiliated himself - his secrets on display to the world.  Perhaps, just as a man can both love and exploit a woman, a gay man can both love and exploit another man.

Whew ok - no more spoilers - but really they're not that major and it's only once you know what's going on that film opens up.  I liked this film a lot.  Much of the power of it comes from the script and the concept alone.  It's directed by Cronenberg and echoes some of his obsessions with identity, but anyone could have produced this and I'd like it just as well.  It was competently made and well acted, but the ideas are the real treasures.