In the Time of the Butterflies

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=leartojugg-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000063K0I&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifrIn the Time of the Butterflies, the Julia Alvarez novel, has been on my shelf for over a year.  I seem to recall it was a One Book, One Chicago pick awhile back.  It was loosely based on the true story of four sisters in the Dominican Republic that fought against a dictator in the 1950s.  Last night, when I was clicking through the free movies on hulu.com, I found the Showtime movie that Salma Hayek based on it.

I have to tell you, watching Edward James Olmos play the bad guy was really disconcerting.  I had assumed that he would play the dad.  Also, Marc Anthony has a small role as  a cute revolutionary boy, which was rather distracting in light of his recent headlines.  Also, I had to skip a scene where someone was being tortured.

Finally, it was such a short film.  I very much had the feeling that it was glossing over things.

Having said that, I bought Hayek’s performance.  She does really well with portraying the, “I am scared out of my mind but trying to keep it together,” bit.  

I am happy to say that watching this film made me more interested in reading the full novel.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Enter your comment here...

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Email (required) (Address never made public)

Name (required)

Website

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

Notify me of new comments via email.

Notify me of new posts via email.

Δ