Crazy Over You

Butterfly Kiss(1995)

Directed By Micheal Winterbottom

Micheal Winterbottom's first film comes years after Greg Araki's "The Living End" and "Thelma And Louise", but where the later lead to some kind of bittersweet empowerment, the former film always existed in relation to society at large (usually depicted as angry rednecks).

"Butterfl

y Kiss" lets it's cast, particularly Amanda Plummer, as the delusional and manic Eunice scouring the gas stations of England for a woman named Judith, who she claims to love, and murdering or assaulting those she finds to be "Not-Judith" for being impersonators, to really chew the scenery and draw us without irony or sentiment, into the maelstrom of raw performance.

Sheepish Miriam played by Saskia Reeves is submissive, frail, and doe eyed enough to be the heroin of a Lars Von Trier flick, and quickly takes up with and follows the mad Eunice like a homeless puppy, into murder, self-degradation, and the innocence of first love.

In fact the naturalistic cinematography, cruelty, and intensity of performances also fit the LVT trademark, but the fantastic use of pop songs, the mixture of ligthness into sudden violence, and black and white breaking of the 4th wall; these uncanny shifts in tone elevate it above the numerous 90's spree films, are proceed director Micheal Winterbottom's later works.

The highlights of "Butterfly Kiss" are the performances of the underrated leads, and the evocative use of pop songs (The Cranberries, Bjrok, PJ Harvey etc) that make up the soundtrack.

Funny, frantic, visually daring (especially for a first film) "Butterfly Kiss" lives in a world of it's own, soaking in the calm and scenic warmth of heads pressed against car windows, even if the cars have day old corpses in the trunk.