Adapted from David Henry Hwang’s eponymous play, which itself is based on a true story, M. Butterfly follows a René Gallimard (Jeremy Irons) who works at the French embassy in Beijing in the 1960s. There, he meets and falls in love with a Beijing opera singer, Song Liling (John Lone). Unbeknownst to Gallimard, Song, who plays a female character on stage as per Beijing operatic conventions at the time, is a man. But Song also keeps his pretence in real life to seduce and spy on Gallimard for the Chinese government. The pair remains in a deceptive relationship for over two decades, as the truth threatens to shatter Gallimard’s ideal of a ‘perfect woman’. Canadian horror maestro David Cronenberg eschews his usual penchant for the abject and instead turns his focus to the curious desire of man.

The screenings will be followed by a pre-recorded conversation between David Henry Hwang and M+ Curator Chanel Kong in English.

David Cronenberg (b. 1943, Canada) made his first feature film Stereo in 1969. After a decade of mostly low budget B movies, he garnered notoriety with The Brood in 1979. Subsequently, his style continued to mature with films such as Scanners (1981), Videodrome (1983), The Fly (1986), and Dead Ringers (1988)—cementing his reputation as a visionary in the horror genre. Outside of his forte, Cronenberg has occasionally directed dramatic features such as the psychoanalytic historical drama A Dangerous Method (2011).