Madam Baterflai is an ideologically defiant, rightfully non-conformist debut feature
“First of all, I selected five persons of different ages and with different life stories so that I could tackle different issues. So there’s Mariana, who is rather innocent, untarnished and enjoys a healthy family life; then there’s Paloma, who, as a prostitute, represents that which is illegal and forbidden; Marcela, who represents the very construction of a woman: has many surgeries, and is an embodiment of human frailty; Joseph, who stands in for history itself as she survived the dictatorship and AIDS, now she’s a Buddhist, an actress and a dancer; and last but by no means least, there’s Carolina, the Madame, the butterfly, the only one who’s had a sex change operation... and the only one who’s a parent,” says Argentine filmmaker Carina Sama about the protagonists of her opera prima Madam Baterflai, a humanistic, poignant documentary about the life stories of four transvestites and a transsexual from the province of Mendoza who candidly speak up about how, against all odds, they proudly became who they are today.
Unlike many documentaries with a socially conscious agenda, Madam Baterflai tells its multifaceted stories by addressing the many bonds missed and made, family liaisons and subjectivities. It’s not about statistics, laws, decrees, manifests of declarations of principles.
Yet it is deeply political, ideologically defiant, and rightfully non-conformist. It’s not belligerent in the sense it doesn’t cry out for social acceptance, but instead it reflexively demonstrates that acceptance of diversity is the only possible way to go as to create a respected and respectable society for everybody. This doesn’t mean Madam Baterflai has been made to state the obvious, but rather to show that the obvious has been stated way too many times already.
An unmistaken sense of deep honesty and immediacy is another major asset in Carina Sama’s debut film, which brings viewers closer to the protagonists with an emphatic attitude. We are not asked to cast judgment or to agree with everything that’s said, but rather to watch and listen carefully, and then draw our own conclusions. Of course, there’s a prominent discourse against discrimination and in favour of the freedom to be who you truly are, but said discourse comes out of the intimate, testimonies of Mariana, Marcela, Carolina, Paloma, and Joseph — and not out of philosophical thoughts or intellectual elaborations established beforehand.
It’s the slices of their lives, their anecdotes, the things they had to go through, their real and ongoing struggle for acceptance that really makes the flesh and blood of the documentary. In other words: once you get to know the essentials of their lives, reality doesn’t get any more compelling.
On the other hand, there’s a downside as regards film form. Given the richness of the material, a more in depth, detailed approach to some key aspects in the stories would have drawn out a more insightful picture. It’s a matter of organizing the narrative better, with a tighter sense of storytelling, so that it doesn’t involuntarily zigzag or becomes unnecessarily panoramic. This way, these stories would have stood out more than they do now. However, as it is, Madam Baterflai is both a touching experience and a valuable documentary in favor of much-needed visibility and the acceptance of gender diversity.
