Directed by David Cronenberg; starring Jeremy Irons and John Lone; Warner Brothers; Rated R

In "M. Butterfly," East meets West meets "The Crying Game," with dismal results. The film, adapted for the screen by David Henry Hwang from his award-winning play, tries hard (and fails) to say something about sex, race and fantasy.

The scenario, based on a real story, seems full of dramatic potential. In 1964, Rene Gallimard (Jeremy Irons), a French diplomat stationed in Beijing, starts a long-term affair with Song Liling (John Lone), an opera singer who enchants him with Eastern modesty and feminine mystery. Several years later Gallimard learns he's been had, so to speak: Song was a spy for the Chinese government and a man.

On stage, this scenario apparently provided a dramatic way to explore issues of imperialism and sex stereotyping. A stylized stage production does seem more appropriate to this tale, since it would allow you to forget the rather peculiar clinical details of the story.

The makers of this movie, though, have made the deadly mistake of trying to present realistically a story which would seem more plausible with an element of abstraction. They've included a few truly bizarre sex scenes, which probably would be better left to the imagination of the audience. As it is, you spend less time thinking about race and sex fantasies than about exactly what these two were doing in bed, and exactly what Gallimard thought they were doing.

This all but destroys the supposed deeper meaning of the film. Eventually you begin to suspect this story would work better on "Geraldo" than as a metaphor exposing gender and race as performance. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction, and in this movie Gallimard's story seems so peculiar it simply does not hold any implications beyond itself.

In one ridiculous scene, for example, Gallimard makes policy based on the faux-exotic drivel Song has been feeding him, claiming to his superior at the embassy that "once you know Orientals, you realize they're secretly attracted to our Western ways." It's hard to see Gallimard as representative Western macho man; it's hard to see him as anything other than an idiot.

Actually, it's pretty hard to see him at all. In literally every scene, every character's face is half covered in shadow, creating a veil effect. In one or two places this device might have made a clever comment on Gallimard's (and everyone else's) culturally induced blindness. Instead it just seems like nobody has enough sense to switch on a light bulb.

In order to highlight Song's femininity and modesty, the other women in the film are reduced to playing caricatures of brassy, tacky European womanhood. Gallimard's wife (Barbara Sukowa) spends most of her onscreen time wiping her runny nose and looking pasty. Annabel Leventon, as a European diplomat's wife with whom Gallimard has an "extra-extra-marital affair," gets similar treatment. Bleached blonde and sporting a leathery tan, she perches naked on a bed and smirks at Gallimard, "Come and get it." In case you don't get the point of all this, the script is there to help: early in the movie, we're shown Sukowa doing a garish imitation of a geisha girl fluttering a copy of Elle magazine (nudge, nudge) as a fan.

"M. Butterfly" assumes throughout that the audience is particularly stupid. This is a film in which French diplomats stationed in the Far East have to inform each other, "The loss of Indochina was a great embarassment to us." Later, Song bids Gallimard fairwell at the train station as she leaves to give birth to their fictive child. She tells him, "I will return three months after the birth of our son, as is my people's custom"--a detail she presumably would have let him in on earlier. And when the words "Paris 1968" flash onscreen, the filmmakers ensure that anyone a little rusty on their French history won't be left drifting long. Within moments, a drunk conveniently enters to explain, "There's Communist students rioting everywhere!" Screenwriting hands don't come much heavier than this.

This terrible material wastes the talents of its principals. Irons makes the most of his two-dimensional character, and Lone ("The Last Emperor") manages to make clear Song's contempt for the fantasies he caters to. One of the film's few decent moments is Song's explication of the appeal of Puccini's Madama Butterfly: would the opera seem so romantic, she asks, if the races of the protagonists were reversed? Would Westerners swoon to see a blond cheerleader kill herself over a doomed love affair with a Japanese businessman?

The bitter penultimate scene, which involves a confrontation between Song and Gallimard--both wearing suits--is also particularly fine, hinting at the power the stage version must have had.

Don't be fooled, though. The force of this exchange only lasts a few minutes until we're asked to witness a ludicrous closing episode at the French prison where Gallimard has been incarcerated for betraying state secrets. In this scene, Gallimard displays his final transformation from a sexist imperialist into a transvestite performance artist. The inmates seem charmed. But then they--unlike you--don't really have anywhere else to go.