`Butterfly' traces Spanish boy's metamorphosis

Movie review

XXXX "Butterfly" (a k a "The Tongue of the Butterfly"), with Fernando Fernan Gomez, Manuel Lozano, Uxia Blanco, Gonzalo Uriarte. Directed by Jose Luis Cuerda, from a script by Rafael Azcona, based on Manuel Rivas' stories. 97 minutes. Broadway Market. "R" - Restricted because of a strong sex scene.

Moncho, the boy hero of the extraordinary new Spanish film, "Butterfly," is remarkably alert to the tensions of 1936 in his Galician village. The government is faltering, rumors of change in Madrid and Barcelona are circulating, and the military is gaining power.

Played with instinctive sensitivity by Manuel Lozano, the boy knows that his "mystical" mother (Uxia Blanco) is more attached to the church than his skeptical tailor father (Gonzalo Uriarte) - and that she doesn't appreciate the jokes dad makes about lawyers being hired to slide the rich into heaven.

When Moncho's aging teacher and friend, Don Gregorio (Fernando Fernan Gomez), rescues the boy from an asthma attack by dipping him in a stream, Moncho's mother remembers that holy water once did the trick.

His Republican father points out that the river wasn't blessed and the teacher managed by himself. He feels that teachers are underpaid and "the light of the Republic," and he makes a new suit for the man.

However, it has been noticed that Moncho has lost interest in becoming an altar boy. Don Gregorio has captured his attention and introduced him to science and literature, and this is clearly regarded as a threat.

Moncho understands these conflicts on a personal level, yet he's oblivious to labels. He doesn't understand precisely why people are choosing up sides, what "communist" or "fascist" might mean, or what all this will have to do with his own coming-of-age as the Spanish Civil War heats up.

And of course he has other things on his mind, including the mystery of adult sexuality. When Moncho spies on a man and woman coupling in the hay, he senses that the woman has lost interest in the relationship, and he refutes the common wisdom that they must be "in love" to be doing such things.

Yet when he discovers that his father has a daughter by a woman who has just died, he naively wonders how the girl can be treated as an embarrassment: "So why doesn't she live with us?"

Moncho knows when his older brother, Andres (Alexis de Los Santos), is so smitten with an unattainable, speechless young woman that Andres too can barely speak. He can communicate his passion only through music. But there's an aching gap between what Moncho understands and what Andres feels.

At one point, the brothers are captured in the same lingering wide-screen shot, joined in sympathy but separated by depth of experience. The director, Jose Luis Cuerda, and his cinematographer, Javier Salmones, seem to work as one at moments like this, emphasizing again and again that identical events are perceived differently by each participant.

The cast is perfection, Rafael Azcona's writing sublime; even Alejandro Amenabar's music, which might have become manipulative in other circumstances, is used discreetly.

"Butterfly" is a loss-of-innocence classic that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as "Forbidden Games" and "The 400 Blows." Its finale is equally devastating.