Swallowtail Butterfly (film)
| Swallowtail | |
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| Directed by | Shunji Iwai |
| Produced by | Shinya Kawai |
| Written by | Shunji Iwai |
| Starring |
Hiroshi Mikami, Chara, Ayumi Ito Yosuke Eguchi Andy Hui Atsuro Watabe |
| Music by | Takeshi Kobayashi |
| Cinematography | Noboru Shinoda |
| Distributed by | Kadokawa Herald |
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Release date
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Running time
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148 minutes |
| Language |
Japanese English Mandarin |
Swallowtail, also known as Swallowtail Butterfly (スワロウテイル Suwarōteiru), is a 1996 Japanese crime film directed by Shunji Iwai, starring Hiroshi Mikami, pop-singer Chara, and Ayumi Ito.
The film was shot on hand-held cameras using jump cuts and other visual techniques. It covers a wide array of themes and genres, from social realism to coming-of-age to crime.
A theme song for the film under Yen Town Band, titled "Swallowtail Butterfly (Ai no Uta)", gained first place on the Oricon Weekly Singles Chart of October 7, 1996.
The film is set in Tokyo at an unspecified point in the near future when the Japanese yen has become the strongest currency in the world. This attracts an influx of immigrants, legal and illegal, to work in the city. The immigrants give the city the nickname Yen Town (円都 ien taun?). The Japanese natives, however, despise the nickname, and in retribution call the immigrants by the homophone Yen Thieves (円盗 ien taun?), anglicised as "Yentowns" in the film's English subtitles.
The story centers around a sixteen-year-old girl (Ito) whose mother has just died. The girl is passed on from person to person until she is taken in by a Chinese Yentown prostitute named Glico (Chara), who names her Ageha (Japanese for swallowtail). Under Glico's care, Ageha starts a new life.
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