In the Time of the Butterflies

In the Time of the Butterflies traces the Mirabal sister's recognition of the cruelty of the Dominican Republic's dictator, Trujillo, and their consequent revolutionary work to inform people of his cruelty and to react against it.

In college, I read the novel by Julia Alvarez. Lately, I saw the movie version. I don't remember a lot from the novel, but what I do remember, the movie captures well, even in the dream-like way the novel tells it--the moment in which one of the Butterflies meets her future husband and knows it when she is washing his feel--the poignant end of the novel, in which their car is being followed and they realize that the end is immanent--the way in which the main character discovers her sexuality in the dictator's abuse of it.

The story is moving--the sisters are amazingly strong women who see a situation so serious that their commitment must be to remedy it, even at the expense of tearing their family apart and possibly never seeing their children again. Minerva is a particularly strong woman--she went to law school, although she was not granted her degree because she resisted Trujillo's advances.

A note about the actors: The film stars Salma Hayek. It has Marc Anthony in a supporting role! I thought it looked like him when I was watching it, but dismissed this idea, since all I know about him is that he's the husband of Jennifer Lopez, and what the Fug Girls tell me (which is mostly along the lines of he's a vampire or a "wiry string bean of mischief" or a "a tiny wee pixie but with hormones," etc.). Apparently he's also acted.


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