Butterfly Kiss *** (1995, Amanda Plummer, Saskia Reeves, Kathy Jamieson) – Classic Movie Review 1902

Director Michael Winterbottom’s scary 1995 British thriller stars Amanda Plummer as hysterical psychopath lesbian Eunice, who is walking from one filling station to another along the roads of northern England. Searching for Judith, the woman, she says she loves, Eunice meets and seduces introverted, dependent Miriam (Saskia Reeves) and they set off on the lam together.

Plummer’s Eunice, quoting the Old Testament, cuts a trucker’s throat during sex, and both women bash up men they meet.

This repellent yet bold and arresting lesbian serial killer horror movie, with pretensions at being an art movie examining an inseparable relationship, is a worrying, troubling venture. It’s certainly a confident, highly unusual, powerful cinema debut by Winterbottom (after the TV serial Family), who knows what he’s doing and what he’s after. But the implied portrayal of lesbians as demonic killers and mankind as their deserved victims is pretty unedifying.

The North England truck stop atmosphere is beautifully captured in Seamus McGarvey’s admirable photography. Frank Cottrell Boyce writes with much conviction, with his screenplay based on his own idea.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1902

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