This legendary story takes place in Beijing in the 1960s, where Gao Renni, a diplomat at the French Embassy in Beijing, has always had a deep interest in Chinese culture and feels that Chinese culture is unique and mysterious. In his spare time, he likes to go to the theater to enjoy opera, just when he and his wife go to watch "Madame Butterfly" starring Chinese actress Song Liling (the plot is about a Japanese prostitute Qiao Qiaosang who falls in love with a US naval officer, and after marriage, the officer returns to the United States, forgets and abandons her, and then Qiao Qiaosang commits suicide with hatred), what deeply attracts him is not the plot and performance, but the Chinese maid on the stage with long black hair, yellow skin, and black jewel-like crystal eyes, her unique oriental female mysterious and charming temperament. He quickly became interested in her. After the opera, he met her at the door, and after some self-introduction, quickly began to talk, but she acted indifferently, and she suspected that he liked the opera he had just starred in not because of her performance, but in line with the desire of Westerners to conquer, the desire to conquer Asian women. She also complained bitterly that he did not understand history, did not understand the history of China's invasion by Japan. Gao Renni was deeply fascinated by this woman, and he was out of control, he often came to visit her, and for a long time, Song Liling also developed subtle feelings for him. In the days that followed, he contacted her frequently, visited her on the stage whenever he had time, and often sent her home, and finally Song Liling accepted him, and the two later fell in love. But he didn't know that the relationship didn't bring really good results, but brought him ruin. He and she were in the room every night with tender affection, and she told him about the traditional Chinese culture, the etiquette and virtue of Chinese women, and entertained him with the traditional Chinese hospitality, so that he, a French man, no longer looked at her on the level of the flesh, but was brought into a spiritual realm created by her, a realm created with Chinese concepts, and let him indulge in it without emotion. But she begged him not to let her strip naked to see her naked, because that was a big taboo in Chinese's conception of sex, and he respected her notion that the two gained passion through other means. For him, he fell in love with the woman he liked, this special extramarital affair was worth it, and the Chinese woman with connotation in front of him was so mysterious and charming, so that people were so in love with it and did not forget to be elusive. He was so overwhelmed that he divorced his wife and loved her intently.
Later, she told him that she was pregnant, and she said that she must have a boy for him, and then she did give birth to a baby boy, which made him overjoyed. But she only let him look at the child once, and then took the child away, saying that it was the custom of the old family that the child had to be brought back to the countryside. Later, she told him that the Cultural Revolution had branded all the dramas as rightists and sent them to the frontier labor camp, and after that, the two had rarely met, and before leaving, she told him that being able to get along with him during this period was the greatest joy in this life. During this period, Gao Renni provided Song Liling with a lot of national intelligence, and in his opinion, it was worth it to do all this for the people he loved, at all costs. Later, he returned to Paris, but was expelled from the consulate because of a mistake in his work, and later he changed his career to work as a postman, and when he was about to arrive at the door of his home, he met her again, and the two hugged each other tightly. Not long after, he was summoned to court and arrested for leaking state secrets. At the trial court, at this time, he met Song Liling again, only this time she was no longer dressed as a woman, but a man of the same gender as him in men's clothes. Looking at Li Ling, who was dressed in men's clothes, Rennie felt a great shame. In the court, in the face of questions from lawyers and judges, he could not answer why he did not realize that his lover was a boy and a spy sent by the Communist Party, he had inadvertently revealed a large amount of military intelligence to her, so he was arrested and arrested, while his lover confessed to the facts and explained the motive process in detail, the child was not his two, but an abandoned baby provided by the Communist Party organization, and the Communist Party used her to help collect enemy intelligence, so she had both the dual identity of a drama and a spy. He still couldn't believe all this, that such a ridiculous thing had happened to him. In the prison cart, she stripped naked in front of him, exposing her entire body to his eyes, explaining to him why she had not dared to ask him to see her naked before. She begged for his forgiveness and asked If Gaureni still loved him? But he could not face the fact that Gorenni was deeply shocked, and he could not accept that the lover he had loved for more than twenty years was a boy. He said desperately, "Men love men, something is missing." "Maybe what I'm in love with is just a perfect lie." In the end, he was imprisoned, and Song Liling was repatriated. Finally, one day he figured it out, he bought the jailer to let them provide some cosmetics and wigs and other props for the performance, he dressed himself as a butterfly king on the stage, performed an opera to the prisoners, and then told everyone about his experience in the form of an opera, the deepest love, the most painful hate, the sweetest hope, the most desolate disappointment, never to others, but to himself. What we have been wrestling with all our lives is ourselves. In the warm applause of everyone, Gao Renni committed suicide by cutting his throat with a blade, which was also the end of his life.
The film is based on a real-life story in which Song Liling is a legendary real-life actor and spy, Shi Peipu, and Gao Renni is Bernard Bursiko, a former official at the French Embassy in China. As in reality, the show looks flawed, and it seems ridiculous that the two of them have been together for more than 20 years without knowing that the other is a man. But it is undeniable that Gao Renni really fell in love with a woman, but the woman was played by a man, and Song also had feelings for him, but this relationship could not last long, and Gao Renni, who knew the truth, could not accept this deformed love, but his feelings for her could not be regarded as normal, the biggest possibility was that both of them were gay, from beginning to end there was no deception and deception, but because of the social environment at that time, they did not dare to be open, so they tried every means to find excuses to cover up. Song once asked him why he looked at her, a woman with flat breasts like a boy, but his answer was that she was not flat like a boy, but like a middle school girl who was not yet fully developed. Song often told him that chinese women's status was underground, not valued, and had been treated unfairly for thousands of years, so she had a sense of dependence on Western men, because Western men are different from Chinese men, and they will respect women more than Chinese men. Gorenni's behavior seems to be pity for the other party, instead of the people in the play to soothe each other's pain, if you leave aside the ideological issue, The tragedy of Gorenni is the most typical tragic case caused by the lag in understanding. He used Western thinking to stand in the position of the so-called Westerners, and concocted a product of reverse thinking, Madame Butterfly, and all the images of Oriental women he knew were derived from the comparison with Western culture. He never really cared about the subjects of Eastern civilization, the differences between individual Orientals, the differences between reality and illusion. Song may be true love for Gorenni, but Gorenni eventually discovers that he is only in love with a beautiful lie, not the perfect love he really expected. His tragedy is the tragedy of the collective unconscious as well as the tragedy of individual ignorance.