"Based on a true story that stunned the world, M. Butterfly opens in a cramped prison cell where diplomat Rene Gallimard is being held captive by the French government--and by his own illusions. In the darkness of his cell, he recalls a time when desire seemed to give him wings. A time when Song Liling, the beautiful Chinese diva, touched him with a love as vivid, as seductive--and as elusive--as a butterfly. How could he have known that his true...

A French civil service officer risks and then abandons everything in his life in his obsessive pursuit of a enigmatic Chinese opera diva who harbors a secret.