Flavia, a Honk Kong thirty-year-old teacher, is married with a son. She has to choose between her family and new love. The choice is traumatic for her, since it brings back
a part of herself which belongs to an apparently buried past. As a matter of fact, Flavia falls in love with a young woman she casually meets in a supermarket. She totally urrenders to her and experiences the same intensity of a previous lesbian love she had when she was an adolescent , during the crucial ‘80s, when Hong Kong was going through the Chinese political riots. Meanwhile,, another couple of young women, in today’s Honk Kong, fights against the persistent prejudices which make their relationship difficult.

Butterfly is about a married school teacher who needs to choose between her family and love affair. On the one hand, there is her husband and her child, but there is another woman on the other. A few sub-plots emerge from her life: her lesbian lover students, her first love as a lesbian in her schooldays, and her mother's need for love at an older age. This is a love story about homosexuality. It is also a story about honesty, about honesty to oneself! At the end of the story, Flavia says: “I don’t know. I have been losing things all my life. Now I have also lost my own child. But I have myself. Perhaps this is the only thing that I could ever have, and the only thing that I could never lose.” Times are changing and our society has accepted homosexuality as it is. However, in Hong Kong cinema, homosexuality is still being treated as a gimmick. As a gay film in a Chinese society, there is a need for us to let different voices have the opportunity to express themselves. Although this story is told from the viewpoint of a woman, it shows the multiplicity of identity and the story itself, just like the smell of tealeaves slowly spreading from boiling water. This story has nothing to do with femininity. It is about the care and concern for the correct attitude against one another. “You're not a butterfly if you can't fly!”

2004 61st Venice Film Festival
2004 9th Busan International Film Festival
2004 43rd Golden Horse Film Festival
2005 24th Hong Kong Film Awards - Best New Artist