The Revenge of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 20 - Butterfly, Sword

I must confess I have seen this film about 10 times and I’m still not 100% sure of just what the hell is going on.

This 1993 films is set in Ancient China – it starts with somebody flying into somebody’s house (Gravity does not work the way it does here) and apparently slicing their face off and leaving a note. You barely have time to go “huh” before the scene shifts and somebody is using a bow to launch himself like an arrow (yes I know that’s bloody impossible but well it’s a martial arts swordplay film just roll with it) and attacking a convoy of armed men – a lot of them seem to be made of dry dirt because when he hits them with his sword they just burst into clouds of dust.

This man then captures the head of the convoy. Later he is met by a woman who is brought by a coach like thing that some 8 men are carrying (in mid air) she then emerges and floats to earth on scarves

And then it gets weird.

No seriously – it’s utter madness from beginning to end – people are running about on the tops of trees, using scarves to take people’s heads off which are then delivered to a eunuch who asked for it; myriad frenetically paced kung fu sword battles; two incidents of a man cutting his way through someone – no literally going in one side and bursting out the other – don’t believe me – watch the film. And in one case IT DOESN”T KILL THE GUY . It just seems to annoy him.

There is some sort of plot involving what everybody calls “The Martial Arts World” and who is top dog of said world – there are several clans that are fighting for that honor – we follow one clan headed by Sister Ko (played by the lovely Michelle Yeoh) along with Brother Sing and Brother Yip (they aren’t really related they have grown up orphans on the streets and have adopted each other as family)

There is also another plot wherein Sing is in love with a woman named Butterfly (who doesn’t know Sing is a Martial arts warrior – her dad was one and it got her dad killed so she hates the martial arts world – you getting all this?) however Ko is in love with Sing as well and treats Butterfly with contempt and keeps making sort of passes as Sing. Meantime Yip is in love with Ko but won’t say it as he knows she’s in love with Sing and so he drinks and is very reckless in his missions.

And since this movie isn’t 8 hours long – more like 90 so a lot of this gets really really compressed. I still haven’t figured how the guy with his face cut off figures in all this.

And running around is a guy with a ball. Who at the final fight with the guy who was pretending to be the eunuch because he could set the martial arts clans against each other. No I am not kidding. I may have some of the details wrong but I’ve only seen the film 10 times. Anyway he turns out to be some sort of agent of the emperor and aids Ko and Sing and Yip in the final battle – this is the one where Sing plows his way through the fake eunuch and it doesn’t kill him. The fake Eunuch also garbs a pillar of the building and uses it to pummel ball boy – later in the fight Sister Ko with the help of ball boy take the fake Eunuch’s head off. But even then it’s not enough. I don’t know if they have test audiences in china but I can’t imagine the final scenes where the headless body attacks our heroes arousing anything but laughter.

Anyway it’s sad at the end – because no matter how berserk the whole film was Michelle managed at least communicate the sense of a woman in love with someone who loved someone else and also trapped in a world that demanded she be a ruthless killer. I am touched by the end but it could just be that the fights have beaten me down.

Enjoy with Chinese but don’t order your usual. This is not your usual film.