JustWatch

Swallowtail Butterfly

1996

スワロウテイル

This is the story of Yentowns in Yentown.

An industrial section of Japan got the name of “Yentown” as many immigrants come to make money and hope to go home rich. A small group of people in Yentown try to work together to survive—Ageha, a young girl with no family; Glico, a sex worker; Fei Hong, a poor immigrant from Shanghai; Arrow, an ex-boxer from the US; and Ren, a mysterious guy who seems to know too much about guns. Fortune shines upon them when they find a cassette that will get them rich, but along with money, trouble will always follow.

Ayumi Ito Yosuke Eguchi Chara Hiroshi Mikami Andy Hui Atsuro Watabe Kaori Momoi Tomoko Yamaguchi Nene Otsuka Yoriko Doguchi Mickey Curtis Tetsu Watanabe Tadanobu Asano Ken Enomoto Toshiyuki Kitami Kenji Kohashi Shiek Mahmud-Bey Ken Mitsuishi Toshiya Sakai Sansei Shiomi Keiichi Suzuki Tomorowo Taguchi Hajime Yamazaki Kaei Okina Kaori Fujii Shiro Takehatsu Kent Frick ROLLY Kae Minami Show All…

Alternative Titles

Suwarôteiru, Suwarouteiru, Swallowtail, Swallowtail & Butterfly, Perhonen sydämessä, Suwarōteiru, Yentown, Yentown - Swallowtail Butterfly, 燕尾蝶, 스왈로우테일 버터플라이

Genres

Crime Drama

Premiere

04 Sep 1996

Italy Venice Film Festival

24 Sep 1998

Finland Helsinki International Film Festival

25 Jun 2016

USA New York Asian Film Festival

Theatrical

14 Sep 1996

Japan

02 Jul 1999

Finland

20 Jan 2000

Germany

21 Dec 2000

Switzerland

23 Jun 2005

South Korea18

Finland

24 Sep 1998

Premiere Helsinki International Film Festival

02 Jul 1999

Theatrical

Germany

20 Jan 2000

Theatrical

Italy

04 Sep 1996

Premiere Venice Film Festival

Japan

14 Sep 1996

Theatrical

South Korea

23 Jun 2005

Theatrical18

Switzerland

21 Dec 2000

Theatrical German speaking region

USA

25 Jun 2016

Premiere New York Asian Film Festival

148 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Jaime Grijalba ★★★★

For Brooklyn Magazine I interviewed Shunji Iwai in occasion of the NYAFF.
www.bkmag.com/2016/06/22/nyaff-shunji-iwai/
When I asked him about this film, he said the most beautiful thing I've heard in a while:
"I’m not sure if our world is getting closer to my film, but I do know that the world is always unfair and stupid and dirty… but beautiful."
Review by comrade_yui

like so many of my favorite films, swallowtail butterfly creates a whole fleshed-out visceral world that you have the blessing to exist in for a couple of hours. shunji iwai's work here leads us into a life beyond nationality, race, class, beyond gender, beyond language. it's a melancholic portrait of humans clinging together in an indifferent universe, a truly epic odyssey where you get to hear everyone's stories, where every character gets to shine, where empathy allows us to travel to a fantastical place not too different form our own world
at times it approximates tarantino and michael mann's love of sprawling serialized novelistic detours, but whereas those filmmakers strive to achieve a holistic expression of formalist dynamics within a…
Review by ALISTAIR LEACH ★★★★★ 5

Maybe it is the voice over giving the perspective of female character...
Perhaps its the young girl being taken in by the couple and seen as a "younger sister"...
Imaginably it is due to the fable and poetic aspect, of the narrative, including its darkness.....
Conceivably it could be the complete dominion Shunji Iwai has over screen here for the entire run time of the film.....
Possibly that the visual look of the film feels like it occurs at magic hour....
Moreso, it could be that this is 100% a convincing world build for the films environment...
But anyone else get Days of Heaven vibes with this....
the score helps as well.
Review by Marcissus ★★★★★ 3

Not only are all the characters in this unbelievably cool, they are relentlessly kind... which is just about the coolest thing you can be. I respect the hell out of art that just shrugs its shoulders at the seriousness of life. Whatever happens, happens
Review by Jerry McGlothlin ★★★★ 10

“Thank God there was the gold to forge.”
Under sunless skies in sodden little rooms filled with capacious aspirations, the baby caterpillar commences the big crawl. With furious legs, it flits forward, through a penniless penury in the midst of binding sadness shared with its fellow cherubs.
As the caterpillar grew older, it sold its body to the highest bidder—they said they’d been here before. But impending metamorphosis awaited the persistent nympha and her band of unjustly cast-away chrysalides; the breaks had broke and happed to favor the desperate.
It sung sweetly and with pain, and in singing its beatific ballad, unbound the quiescence of not just itself, but its colony. The crimes that came with were a matter of…
Review by PlaguDocta ★★★★★ 5

To See the Next Part of the Dream. Everyone is here. We didn't go anywhere. Cassette organs, the editing has an emotional melody like the rest of Shunji's dreams. He did this to spread yen across. Did you have a butterfly in a bottle today? Contained inside, was the youth that was gorgeous, the absurdist black hilarity, the memories of the friends that were made and the raw (heroic) bloodshed that rebelled. You will find every tone and feeling here (like a trick in a magic book). And for every longing, there is a beauty that is inherently ugly. But somehow, it fully remained as it is.
Review by Chris ★★★★

A sprawling mosaic on self-identity and social inequality that imagines an alternative Tokyo where a myriad of different nationalities converge in a collective search for contentment. Even as the cultural and racial barriers used to separate people are disappearing, these inhabitants must still fight to survive in a largely apathetic world. We get a chance to float through this vividly constructed environment and observe their stories, witnessing the intense bonds and malicious conflicts that arise from adversity.
Having only been familiar with Shunji Iwai's more restful works, it's impressive to see him handle something so vibrantly multifaceted with such clear confidence. He deftly combines numerous genres (from coming of age and dystopia to crime and social realism) in a way…
Review by s.

there is a heaven but nobody ever get there.
you die and your spirit rises to the sky,
but as soon as it touches a cloud it turns into rain.
emotionally powerful, complex, and tragically lovely.
shunji iwai is skilled when it comes to creating such
an intricate story, with each scene having a message
to tell. the characters felt real, and i still cared for them
after completing the film. swallowtail butterfly left me
feeling emotional, but mainly chaos and pure love.
Review by Ben ★★★★★

Japanuary 2022: Shunji Iwai
Does it get much better than watching Chara sing banger after banger after banger?
Is there anything funnier than Tadanobu Asano showing up in a movie for two seconds to dance while Chara (his wife at the time) is singing her heart out?
And is there anything more moving than watching a densely layered story detailing a transition toward multiculturalism, individual journies of self-discovery, and a diverse group finding different ways to overcome the odds stacked against them?
The answer to all of those questions is no. There is not much else out there that is better than what is listed above.
Swallowtail Butterfly has its issues, mainly clunky delivery of the story at times and…
Review by Filipe Furtado ★★★★

Shunji Iwai follow up to his major breakthrough Love Letter and emotional apocalypse is turned into a literal one. It is alternate Japan is impressive imagined and texture, a devasted landscape that is used to explore a lot of feelings of deslocation and longing. His fair for pop efemera and good feel for character is put to great use. Among 90s apocalyptic scenarios from the end of history days, this is among of the ones that aged the best, a quarter of century later, it remains very felt and real.
Review by MrJago ★★★★

"Ok Mr. Iwai, which genre will this movie be in?" "ALL OF THEM!"
Less of a film, more of a world you get to explore with a bunch of people, kinda loved this and the fact that movies like this exist :) Beautifully shot too.
Really great to see this much diversity in a Japanese movie too. The scene with the makeshift family in the scrapyard where my favourites.
Review by freelunch ★★★★★ 3

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - Japanese cinema is unmatched.
I’ve really liked the Iwai films I’ve seen so far, but this really takes the cake. What an incredible world he’s created here. This film is about 18 different genres in one (dystopian, music drama, coming of age, western, you name it), yet it still comes off very cohesive and so rewarding?? Plus I wasn’t expecting it to be so chock-full of amazing characters. I’m just a sucker for stories about misfits and surrogate families.
This reminded me of Love Exposure a bit. The story and themes are wildly different but both films are so exhilarating and overflowing with different themes that it becomes overwhelming a bit, but like I said, this was extremely rewarding.