A thing of beauty

The metamorphosis of Butterfly

by Peter Keough

BUTTERFLY. Directed by José Luis Cuerda. Written by Rafael Azcona based on the stories "La lengua de las mariposas," "Carmiña" and "Un saxo en la niebla" by Manuel Rivas. With Fernando Fernán Gómez, Manuel Lozano, Uxía Blanco, Gonzalo Uriarte, Alexis de los Santos, Jesús Castejón, Guillermo Toledo, and Elena Fernández. A Miramax Pictures release. At the Avon and Jane Pickens.

A wise old man, a cute little boy, the approaching nuisance of the Spanish Civil War -- bells should be going off in the head of anyone who finds Oscar bait like Cinema Paradiso mawkish, arty pablum. Not so José Luis Cuerda's Butterfly, which sheds the cocoon of sentimental stereotypes for a moving and uplifting evocation of innocence and historical tragedy. Based on stories by Galician writer Manuel Rivas, this is the rare adaptation that transforms its literary origins into cinematic virtues, with the depths and complexities of the original lingering beneath the surface of the film's sensuous images and in the spaces of its quirky, elliptical narrative. A sly fusion of the earthy and the ethereal, the lyrical and the grotesque, it comes to grips with the good and evil innate in human nature.

The wise old man is Don Gregorio (iconic Spanish actor Fernando Fernán Gómez), local schoolteacher for a bucolic Galician village, amateur naturalist, atheist, and Republican. The cute little boy is asthmatic seven-year-old Moncho (an irresistible, jug-eared Manuel Lozano), whose father, town tailor Ramón (Gonzalo Uriarte), is a socialist afraid to wear his politics on his sleeve even though the rickety Republic is still in power, and whose mother, Rosa (Uxía Blanco), is a staunch Catholic, hater of "reds," and fierce protector of her family. After he's been laid up for a year with his illness, Moncho's belated first day of school is a disaster. Terrified of his teacher and class, he pees himself.

Don Gregorio, however, proves no ogre but an epitome of the liberal virtues that failed to save Europe from the nightmare of Fascism, war, and genocide that would soon follow this sunny autumn in 1935 -- an epitome made deeply wounded and indomitable flesh by Fernán Gómez's superb performance. He imposes order through tact and patience: when the class members act up, he waits by the window until they are still, then opens their minds to the secret language of poetry and nature. On one field trip he discloses to them the mystery of the butterfly's tongue (La lengua de las mariposas is the film's more suggestive original title).

Not all Moncho's lessons come from his enlightened teacher, however. Much of the film's magic owes to its fidelity to a child's confused, incomplete, incandescent point of view. Along with Moncho, we glimpse such enigmatic adult moments as Don Gregorio's refusal to accept a gift of game from a local fascist landowner and Rosa's reluctance to let Ramón make Don Gregorio a suit as a token of appreciation. Then there's the overheard conversation in which a local roughneck explains how his hot affair with a local woman has been complicated by Tarzan, her overly attentive dog -- but this mystery is cleared up when Moncho and a pal spy on the couple's lovemaking and it turns out that Tarzan likes to do more than just watch.

This last scene is crude and hilarious but far from gratuitous -- there are unexpected implications, as both lovers will play significant roles in the rest of the story. Splicing together three disparate tales could have resulted in a disjointed, episodic picture; instead, Cuerda and screenwriter Rafael Azcona have layered their piece, with each tale opening into the next. At times the lines of narrative intersect in a moment of epiphany, as when Moncho, unaware that his brother Andrés (Alexis de los Santos) has just experienced his first heartbreak, innocently repeats the poem Don Gregorio once recited to him when the teacher confessed his own sorrow.

If Butterfly has a flaw, it's being too hard rather than too soft: the Fascist bullies are pure evil, whereas the Republic comes across too much like Paradise Lost. Still, you could hardly expect Cuerda, a leftist who's spent most of his life struggling for free expression under Franco, to show greater evenhandedness. As for the fine line between helplessness and betrayal, between innocence and a lifetime of guilt, he gets that just right. Butterfly is the ultimate revenge against tyranny -- a work of art.