Float like a Butterfly is an Irish movie released in 2018 and directed by Irish film director Carmel Winters. This movie is about a 15-year-old girl, named Frances. Her mother was killed during a fight with the police. Because of that fight her father was sent into prison for years. During that time, Frances was brought up by her grandparents and other members of the nomadic community. But in rural Ireland, gypsies are often stigmatized and rejected by society. Frances loves boxing. Like her idol Muhammad Ali, a great boxer, who fought for the rights of African Americans in the 60s and the 70s, Frances wants to defend her people inside and outside the boxing ring. As her father returns to freedom, he doesn't want to accept his daughter's will to box. Together with Frances's little brother, who doesn't act as masculine as his father would like him to, they go on a road trip. After difficult times, they all come back to their departure point. Frances's father finally accepts to let his daughter fight for the pride of the gypsy community. Frances wins the fight, and her father recovers his pride by punching the policeman that killes his wife in the face. Then the movie ends.
I enjoyed this movie. At first I didn't know what to expect. Was it gonna be a boxing movie, or just a movie about female empowerment ? Well, now I can say it's a bit of both. It isn't very clear when you read the plot, but the main theme of this movie is the relationship betwwen a father and his daughter. Of course female empowerment is also important, because Frances has to overcome a lot of gender stereotypes to reach her goals. Boxing is a good idea and brings originality to the movie, but it doesn't actually play a very important role in the story.
Talking about acting, I really liked the acting of Hazel Doupe, the young actress, who plays the role of Frances. She really has a lot of skills. Since Frances is the main character of the movie, you can really say that Hazel Doupe's acting holds the movie together.
I also liked the realism of the movie. I went on to the Internet after I had watched it in order to do some research about the nomadic communities's lifestyle and I was amazed. A lot of the information I found was actually in the movie. It shows the dedication of the film crew to make their mvie as realistic as possible. The movie also says a lot about the stereotypes about the gypsy community. Carmel Winters didn't hesitate to speak about numerous inequalities at once in her movie, and I think that's a good thing.
The only thing i criticize in this movie are the stretched gaps. Sometimes the situation changes a lot within a few minutes, and you don't really know what happened. But that's not a big problem.
To sum up, I really liked this movie because of the acting, the original plot and the important themes it speaks about. A must-see !
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