The Butterfly Murders

The Butterfly Murders, director Tsui Hark's dreamy feature debut, takes place in the aftermath of a martial arts apocalypse that has, quite apparently, wiped out scores of the tight-knit, chivalrous adventurers who usually find themselves battling across similar, Shawscope frames. Hark and cinematographer Fan Gam-yuk's picturesque depiction of rural China is, therefore, one littered with the remains of these doomed warriors and the carrion insects that feast upon their rotting bodies. This viewing, done so under the less than ideal conditions of an ancient Laserdisc rip with perfunctory, burned-in English subtitles, had the unintended effect of adding a layer of analogue obliqueness to a film already plotted around incomprehensible deceptions and strange, ulterior motives. What is clear though, despite the smudgy delivery system, is that Hark came out of the gate with an obvious gift for staging and shot design: the deserted fort, where a great deal of the non-underground action takes place, is wrapped in butterfly nets to keep the poisonous lepidopterans out; the billowing, diffused photography of high-end advertisement is gifted not just an organic but an axial purchase within the piece. Dotted with nature doc close-ups of massing moths, it does eventually become apparent that Hark views his disturbed, distrusting heroes with a similar sort of detached fascination. Motivation is rarely parsed and accords are fleeting; instead these costumed heroes strike and claw at each other, to no clear advantage, until their fragile arenas collapse in on them.