Butterfly Within an American Entourage

The Petrivka area of Kyiv now boasts a new Butterfly Movie Theater, equipped with a modern Dolby Digital Surround EX system. Perhaps it will remind many Ukrainian cinema lovers of Yury Fialka’s Return of the Butterfly , dedicated to the unrivaled Solomiya Krushelnytska. Thus, on the one hand, the movie theater’s name is absolutely cinematographic. On the other, this is the only thing in it having anything to do with the Ukrainian cinema, since its repertoire is oriented toward American films only. Thus the first film showed in Butterfly was Gore Verbinski The Mexican. The film’s plot is rather complicated. One day, which was certainly not the best day for Jerry Welbach, a reluctant bagman, who was given two ultimatums. The first is from his mob boss to travel to Mexico to retrieve a priceless antique pistol known as “the Mexican”... or suffer the consequences. The second is from his girlfriend, Samantha to end his association with the mob. It seemed to Jerry that his boss’s threat sounds more, so to speak, concrete, and finding a pistol looked like an easy job. Jerry, however, was wrong.

The Mexican might not be the most breathtaking Hollywood production, but for many its shortcomings will be compensated by Brad Pitt’s and Julia Roberts’ presence. Another attraction is the fact that during the shooting they took such a liking for each other that they decided to never part in terms of their creative work. After The Mexican they acted together in Ocean’s Eleven and now are working at Replay.

The interior of the new movie house is also designed in the American style: a roomy hall, a democratically furnished cafe, traditional popcorn, cola, and beer. What distinguishes Butterfly from other Kyiv movie theaters is that it has three halls (one with 250 seats and two others with 139 each). Thus, there is a chance that in time Butterfly will host Ukrainian, European, and art-house cinema along with its Hollywood blockbusters.