The French Female Butterfly Collector: The Body in Crisis and the cinéma du corps

Abstract

A key sequence in Innocence (Hadžihalilović, 2004) offers a pictorial image of a female butterfly collector. Mademoiselle Edith, a school mistress, sits in a darkened room, clasping a pair of tweezers and a craft knife. Edith works with what appears to resemble a dead cabbage butterfly, arranging its wings and gently coaxing apart its folded anatomy. Alongside the movement of her hands, a butterfly collector’s kit is set out against the ochre grain of a wooden desk; we glimpse an exhibit case, glass bottles containing ethyl acetate (poison), insect pins and tweezers. The camera hovers just above Edith’s shoulders, resting at the edge of her arm and catching the slight curve of her chin; the silver tweezers contrast her pink fingernails and her pale skin as the metallic pincers move across the desk and search for a tiny object flecked with light. In the upper part of the image, a sharp corner of a display box points towards the angle of Edith’s framed, lower arm and we see scarlet backing paper beneath a collection of already encased butterflies. Edith shakes out a folded envelope and empties its contents on to her desk. We see a small thing, papery like the envelope.