Giving Birth To A Butterfly

There’s a three legged white deer ornament on the windowsill in Marlene’s mother’s house. Is it broken? Was it made wrong? Perhaps it’s just different.

Diana (Annie Parisse) wiill later tell Marlene (Gus Birney) about a time when she was driving in a snowstorm and saw a white deer running beside her, keeping pace with her car. It’s a tale imbued with a kind of spiritual insight which seems unlikely for a respectable middle aged housewife whose entire existence is constrained by square format, but perhaps it speaks to something within her that usually goes unseen. Unexpected things happen when Marlene enters her life because despite the best efforts of other family members, there are now forces at work that cannot be tidily overcome. It’s as if a leg has been pulled away from beneath her, leaving her permanently off kilter. Perhaps the leg was never there at all, its presence just assumed.

A surreal depiction of suburban life in which events serially fail to accord with expectations, Theodore Schaefer’s curious début feature examines the cautious adherence to convention which we are taught by television and one another, pitting it against the life of the imagination. Diana, who at one point dismisses an object she’s presented with as “just a toy,” ultimately moves towards self-realisation by accepting that there can be value in things which are not themselves real. By contrast, Marlene’s earnest honesty rattles those she interacts with but makes it easy for her to find a place in ordinary life. Her mother, who imagines herself as a glamorous actress always on the verge of a return to past glory, initially seems like a tragic figure, trapped in delusion, but – in the film’s glorious closing scene – emerges as something more like a prophet.

Lovingly presented with pastel colours and theatrical framing, the film is liberally sprinkled with eccentricities but does not, in the end, seem gratuitous. Beneath the kitsch visual language of 1950s advertising, a sharp intelligence is at work. Schaefer also demonstrates a gift for making use of happy accidents. In scenes set in a pet shop, where Marlene spends time with her boyfriend (Diana’s son), there is always at least one fish watching the camera, alert to the mysterious process it is witnessing, reminding us that we, too, are being invited to discover truth through illusion.

It’s a distinctive piece of work. Not everyone will be amused, yet it’s rare to see a vision this complete successfully brought to life on film, and cult status seems to beckon as some viewers are swept off their feet.