Full Frame: Butterfly Girl Review - NP Approved

Butterfly Girl (2014)

Cast: Abigail Evans, John Evans, Stacie Evans
Director: Cary Bell
Country: USA
Genre: Documentary

Editor’s Note: The following review is part of our coverage of the 2014 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. For more information please visit fullframefest.org or follow Full Frame on Twitter.

In times of rough circumstances, people find of way to get through while trying to get by. Then there are amazing cases like Abigail Evans. Abigail is a teenager who lives with epiderolysis bullosa (EB), a life-threatening disease that causes the skin to be so fragile, resulting in painful blisters. When we first meet Abigail, she seems like a regular 18 year old: she’s bubbly, willful, and wants to experience life to fullest. She sells merchandise for her dad’s band in bars and goes home to her attentive mother. Although her parents are separated they’re a team for her and her main support. This is the main theme of the film. Abigail has been surrounded by her parents and at home most of her life, but she’s also fiercely independent.

Bell does a great job at letting the story unfold and allowing the family to progress through their own time and space with minimal interference. Her nuanced approach creates a mood whereupon you fall into the story as if watching from a window.

In Butterfly Girl, first time director Cary Bell follows the charming Abigail as she struggles with the every day effects of her disease and her desire to move on from a life at home. Bell does a great job at letting the story unfold and allowing the family to progress through their own time and space with minimal interference. Her nuanced approach creates a mood whereupon you fall into the story as if watching from a window. This works much in Abigail’s story’s favor, although she doesn’t need the help. Abigail’s story may be tragic, but she’s full optimism.

One of the things I find with documentaries like this is that the subject becomes almost too angelic and syrupy sweet with hope. Not this film. The film pulls no punches as to what this child and her family are going through. There are scenes of Abigail falling and scarred skin, the feeding tube that she must replace herself (some with EB experience blistering in their esophagus and must feed through a tube in their stomach), and the seemingly endless surgeries she must endure to survive. Despite her physical problems she strives to find something to do with her life. She wants to go to college on her own (but amusingly doesn’t want to live in a dorm). She decides to take a trip to Stanford University to volunteer as a research subject. This offers her an opportunity to travel alone without her parents giving her a thirst for more in her life.

Matthew Godwin’s cinematography is textured and rich, forming quiet halos around the subjects and their lives. However, there’s nothing exploitative about Bell’s raw portrayal. Abigail is revealed as a child going through very heavy circumstances, but yet she’s an adult who’s probably experienced way more than most of us have. Life expectancy for those with EB is about thirty years of age. The film touches upon this in a sad moment when Abigail’s mother, Stacie Evans, mentions that she might outlive her daughter. Abigail herself tells her parents that she doesn’t know how long she’ll be with them and that that’s why she needs to explore the world on her own terms.

Matthew Godwin’s cinematography is textured and rich, forming quiet halos around the subjects and their lives. However, there’s nothing exploitative about Bell’s raw portrayal.

Butterfly Girl is enhanced by the music of Emily Bell and Abigail’s father, John Evans. It’s a soft and sensitive soundtrack exposing the world of art and music her family has encompassed their daughter with.

I was in tears throughout most of the movie, mainly as a mother myself I worry every day about what the future holds for my children. I also know the need to live a life free from the nesting ground. It’s conflicting pull for the comfort and the push for something new. Viewers will see both views regardless of their situations because in essence Butterfly Girl is a universal story with a lesson: we don’t know how long we have left, we don’t know why we should let go, but we must make choices or remain stagnant without freedom.

I highly recommend Abigail’s touching and unique story.