Capturing nature’s beauty, it bears repeating, may be easy for filmmakers, but that may not be the same for people. This isn’t to say that the characters in Philippe Muyl’s The Butterfly are unsympathetic, there are worse films. I’ll remember what I didn’t like in a film that is mostly fine, but let’s get to the plot. Julien (Michel Serrault) is an elderly Parisian who only cares about butterflies until a kid walks into his life. That little girl is Elsa (Claire Bouanich), a latchkey kid without a latchkey, nor a way to contact her mother Isabelle (Nade Dieu). Julien has two choices – either leave this kid alone or let her tag along to his butterfly hunting trip. Obviously, he does the latter without knowing of Isabelle reporting Elsa as missing to the police.

The film archetypally depicts the two age demographics and does its best not to go on any big extremes. The same goes for the filmmaking, where it’s either closeups of Elsa or wide shots of the French countryside. The latter has Julien stepping in as a biology teacher for Elsa, teaching her about various fauna and flora. All of The Butterfly just reminds me that I can’t tell kids’ ages nor remember when I learned biology. I’m sure that whatever Julien is teaching her is applicable to them both as misfits outside of broken families. The natural shots are beautiful, even if there is this feeling that all of this is just wallpaper cinema. Although the fact that OVID didn’t restore this is fascinating and gives this experience a contemporaneous and raw edge.

The Butterfly eventually reminds its viewers that reality has to set in for the lovable misfits who are our protagonists. Well, if anything, Elsa starts the gears that starts the third act by calling Isabelle and the latter finally answering. And of course Elsa uses ambiguous language, inadvertently reinforcing Isabelle’s idea of someone forcefully taking Elsa away from her. Nonetheless, it’s strange to say that a film about an alleged kidnapping has no stakes but it’s true here. That’s not a bad thing because there are no villains in a film about caring for a child. Isabelle isn’t a bad mother even if working too hard means leaving her little Elsa to fend for herself. The same goes for Julien who didn’t want to care for Elsa but doing what her mother temporarily couldn’t.

Watch The Butterfly on OVID.