Butterfly

Flavia is a teacher in her thirties, married with a child. She leads an orderly but cramped life in Hong Kong. One day she meets a young singer called Yip in a supermarket and something she has held down for years wakes up. She starts remembering the relationship she had with a girl called Jin in her school years; she had given that up and chosen the life her family wanted. Gorretti Mak's film moves in two times at once: Hong Kong today and the school years at the end of the eighties. The past sections are threaded through the political air of that period, and a personal choice enters the same frame as a historical moment. Josie Ho plays Flavia. Two hours and four minutes. The story blames nobody; Flavia's husband is not a bad man either, and the film offers no easy escape.