Butterfly Kiss (1995) (2024)

Popular reviews

• Review by Dylan van Frankfoort ★★★★ 2

  Winterbottom's debut features most of what you'll find in his later films, though all combined here to great effect, including a mismatched pair on the road together, graphic sex (9 Songs is one of those movies I'm reluctant to display on my shelf—feels like it should be behind some beads [I swear I got it for The Dandy Warhols and Franz Ferdinand performing 2 of the titular 9 songs!]), and a bangin' soundtrack, with multiple Cranberries cuts, Björk, PJ Harvey... basically everything you'd want backing a '90s bisexual Badlands. Plummer and Reeves (Amanda Plummer and Saskia Reeves, that is; had to clarify because otherwise this'd sound like a very different movie, albeit one I'd also watch) are amazing, and I'm…

• Review by Sally Jane Black

  Despite playing the depraved bisexual character at high volume, the film manages to depict characters that are compelling. The sexuality of each of the characters at first seems to be subsumed by the serial killer duo nature of their relationship, by the power dynamic of predator alpha and reluctant beta. It makes this feel like a very heterosexual film, like the queerness isn't part of the characters but part of the plot. There is no tenderness between them, no attraction, no connection, not on a romantic, not on a sexual, not on a companionship level. It's a connection between the strong and the weak, terms used in the sense of a ruthless sort of view of humanity, in terms of…

• Review by B E R T ★★★★ 1

  It’s a damn shame that Amanda Plummer isn’t a more celebrated actress, she is so insanely talented. Butterfly Kiss is a very good film, it’s a lesbian killer road movie, with a cracking script and an exceptional lead performance by Plummer. It’s a very little known film but if you ever do come across it I sure do suggest you give it a whirl.

• Review by teamgal ★★★

  When you want your serial killer movie to be low-key, lo-fi and depressing as hell.

• Review by 🇵🇱 Steve G 🐝 ★★★½ 3

  Maggie's in the Mud: 80s and 90s British Cinema Project

  I never have the slightest idea, when I watch a Michael Winterbottom film, whether I'm going to like it or not. I think that might be what spurs me on to watch his films, actually.

  Because, on balance, I'd say I haven't really been won round to him despite the one obvious exception. Yet I can always expect the unexpected and you could never accuse him of not trying things that are challenging or unusual.

  I sat through most of Butterfly Kiss not really knowing what I made of it, until the end where I decided that it was actually pretty good. Its core strength certainly likes with the dual…

• Review by Mark Cunliffe 🇵🇸 ★★★½

  1995's Butterfly Kiss is director Michael Winterbottom's big screen debut and it's a clear example of him starting his career as he means to go on, with a significant dollop of provocative storytelling. From the pen of his erstwhile collaborator Frank Cottrell Boyce, Butterfly Kiss is an attempt at creating a specifically American genre type - the wild, law-breaking road movie - right here in the north of England, up and down the M6.

  Amanda Plummer (no stranger to walking on the wild side, and adopting a curious baby-doll attempt at a Lancastrian accent that put me in mind of future Winterbottom star Shirley Henderson) stars as Eunice, a clearly troubled and psychotic soul who, swathed in chains, piercings and…

• Review by LordSlaw ★★★★

  That faint clinking noise? That comes from Eunice's penitential undergarments (if garments they can be called). Or are they penitential? I think they are because Eunice frequently, especially when in an overwrought state, quotes scripture. But perhaps she's just a fetishist. Whoever or whatever she is, she's most certainly unhinged.

  Amanda Plummer is fascinating and fabulous as Eunice, by turns frantic, desperate, and then menacing. What is she searching for? Absolution? Dissolution?

  Equally compelling is Saskia Reeves as Miriam, the lonely petrol-station attendant who follows Eunice along the highways of England on her strange odyssey of sex and murder.

  The exterior landscapes are bleak and gray. The interior landscapes are shambolic. The ending is oddly heartwrenching. Butterfly Kiss is a fabulous flick.

• Review by Amy Andrews ★★★½

  I love unhinged forgotten shit like this, but boiiiii Amanda Plummer was fighting for her life with that Lancashire accent. Genuinely thought she was doing Icelandic or something.

• Review by art ★★★★½

  "How do you know?" "Oh, I've looked up and down all these roads." "Looked for what?" "I don't know. Someone to love me, I suppose."

  okay WOAH???? i need everyone to watch this right now

• Review by Hollandrian ★★★★½

  Thelma and Louise on crack

• Review by Moria ★★★★

  1994 was a bumper year for the theme. Seemingly spontaneously, a number of films all around the world – the Canadian Fun, Peter Jackson’s celebrated Heavenly Creatures, the French Sister, My Sister, and a few months later Butterfly Kiss – took up the theme of girl lovers/murderers. Each effort appears to have arisen of its own devices rather than jumped a trend. The only inspiration the films may have had in common was the recent success of the feminist/anarchist tract Thelma and Louise.

  Butterfly Kiss is an extraordinary film. All of this can be placed down to its characterization. At the centre of the film is a startling performance from Amanda Plummer. Amanda Plummer has the tendency to come across…

• Review by EnteredTheVoid ★★★½

  As raw, nasty and stylish as you'd expect from Winterbottom's debut feature.