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M. Butterfly
Director David Cronenberg came horribly unstuck with this insipid adaptation of David Henry Hwang's successful Broadway play about sexual deception and espionage. Jeremy Irons stars as a minor French diplomat in Beijing who falls under the spell of beautiful Chinese diva Song Liling. But not only is Song a spy, she's also a man! It's not that John Lone's performance is bad, it's just that his constant five o'clock shadow would surely tip anyone off instantly. What worked as a stage illusion clearly doesn't in close-up and, while it's obvious why Cronenberg would be attracted to such an operatic story of blurred identity, his gender-bending Mata Hari should be filed under "interesting failure".
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