Original subtitles

Love is like a butterfly, soft and gentle as a fly. The

multicolored moods of love are like its satin wings.

Love makes your heart feel strange inside, it flutters like soft wings in

flight. Love is like a butterfly, a rare and gentle thing.

Scared? Yes, I was a bit.

I'm used to going where I want to go.

It sounds like the starter motor to me.

Still, I expect your pleasant husband or one of your pleasant sons can cope with

it. Yes.

Thanks.

I keep coughing up, don't I?

Yes.

Yes, you do.

Well, we'd better untie the ropes.

Oh.

Oh, yes.

Are you a fatalist?

No.

And if you're going to say it was fate that I broke down just as you were

passing, you're wrong.

I'd been stuck there for over an hour. Ah, yes. And I broke down on a road that

led to your favourite restaurant.

And taking into account that you have at least three lunch hours a day, it was

inevitable that eventually you and your stomach would turn up.

You mean you didn't deliberately break down there to capture me, enchant me and

finally seduce me? No.

Ah.

I don't know what your job is, but you don't seem to spend very much time doing

it. My car, does they say?

I don't want your card.

Unless you do plumbing or double glazing or stick rods down drains.

No, I don't do any of those things.

Pity.

Anyway, thanks.

Bye.

Well, at least you know where I am each day at one o 'clock, which is lunchtime.

Yes.

Yes, I do.

Hello. Thick mother.

Wife having a baby.

You've just heard your house is on fire.

No.

Sudden burst of reckless youth brought on by the onset of spring.

You're getting nearer.

Licence. I was afflicted by a thing called happiness.

You've heard of it, I suppose.

I've heard of it, yes.

But I don't suffer from it.

Well, it's a rare complaint.

One tends to go down with it after a severe bout of hope.

The symptoms are euphoria, a reduced sense of responsibility and, um... and

speeding.

You must be a chronic sufferer.

You've got two endorsements already.

Well, I have had a few welcome attacks just lately.

We shall have to cure you, won't we?

We shall have to make you miserable.

You get three now.

Hey, Mum, could you give our guitars a chance?

Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't even listening to that. I was clearing up the breakfast

bin.

I'm sure what a new and spectacular approach to dish -clearing.

I only hope you're going to fault the cornflakes.

Oh, Adam!

Adam.

Well, what do you see, Adam?

What do you mean, what do I see? I see walls, ceilings, carpets, windows.

No, I mean standing here, in the debris, in an IP, with a pile of plates.

Who are you? My mother.

Don't you be a drudge, a slave of a thing.

One day, when you've all finished your chimp tea party in here, you will plug

in, switch me on, and instead of charging round like a female blackened

I'll make a little whirring noise.

She's going to make a little whirring noise. Like a departing canary.

Explain to me, please, if I've got to spend all my life carting other people's

rubbish around, why wasn't I put onto this earth as something else, like a

soldier ant?

Everything's going to be just fine.

See,

all you've got to do is be philosophical about things.

Mum, the thing is, Russ and I didn't start the whole thing, you know? Yeah,

you met Dad, we went around.

It has nothing to do with your father.

I love your father.

I adore your father. Your father is a good, honourable, brilliant man.

Oh, boy. I just came down with an inferiority complex. You know, what we

is, you met this good, honourable, brilliant man. And the natural

that you had two good, honourable, brilliant sons.

This is called, what's the word? Marriage. Right. Now, marriage, marriage

house. Not a house.

A cage.

A cage.

Oh, well, some people like cages. Dad, drink, then.

After spending the day being pecked to death by the rest of the world, he likes

to come back to his dish of seeds and his plastic bath and his little bell.

You, on the other hand, want to escape, kind of, well, fly a bit.

How can I fly?

I've got my head stuck in the bath.

Come on, one extra little flap of your wings.

Oh, you're talking nonsense.

Where would I go?

To the treetop. Oh, fine.

I'd just make it to the first branch and you wouldn't be able to find your

Paddington Bear underpants.

I don't know what this conversation's about.

It's about you being fed up.

Yeah, we reckon you should get out some more, Mum.

Take a job.

I can't do anything.

Spent my whole life bringing you two up to do something.

Yeah, guess we kind of owe you an apology.

Anyway, who would clean the house? Who would do the washing? Get you up in the

morning? There's Ruby.

Pay her extra. With the money you earn from your job. Well, then you can be

Dad and Ralph and me. You can come home at night to a nice, clean, tidy cage.

No, there are too many problems.

You and your father, for a start.

Dad and I get on fine, as long as we don't talk to each other.

What about the cat?

Do we have a cat?

I didn't know we had a cat.

The window cleaner comes every fourth Friday. He has to have a bucket of

Oh, well, that knocks the whole thing on the head. I had a bucket of water. Wow.

We're just not ready for that kind of responsibility.

I suppose I could think about it.

Your father wouldn't be very pleased.

He'd talk a lot and then he'd fall into a fraught sleep and have his recurring

dream about being a hunted whale.

Every time I upset him, he spends the whole night dragging me through the

Look, we've got to split now, OK?

Listen, um... Your father's got a day off tomorrow. He'll be going after his

butterflies.

I'll mention it to him about my getting a job.

Perhaps we'd better both stay out of the way. Sure, sure.

Are you OK?

Yeah. Okay. Yes?

Mm -hmm.

See you.

Okay.

No, absolutely no.

And when I say no, it means I have considered the word yes and decided

it. All right, all right. I am the provider in this house.

Am I not the provider in this house?

Yes, yes, you are the provider.

So why don't you provide me with the right to do what I want?

You do do what you want. This house is full of people doing what they want.

I just stand in the middle of you all like a man directing the traffic.

Then if I get a job, there'd be less of a pile -up, wouldn't there? Where the

hell are my trousers?

They're in your hand. You've had them on and off three times.

It's here.

The day I have dreaded. I can feel it.

All this adrenaline marching through my body. This is the argument that will

finally finish me.

Oh, Ben, Duke, Tottle, everybody else dies once in their lifetime. Why do you

have to do it every day?

I'm not having my wife going out to work and that is final. Why not?

You've already got a job.

Me. What about me?

I work for you.

Why can't I work for me and you work for you?

Oh, gold.

They're at it again.

I suppose with the arrival of this new era in our lives, you'll be going

braless.

Parts of me might just be a little nearer the floor, yes.

And when you get this job, I'll be subjected to deep -freeze food.

Peas melded together with ice, snow caps, sprouts and fish dipped in bird

Yes, and they just have to buy time -saving food.

Followed by a Disneyland trifle in a fluted plastic cup.

We could always get an au pair girl to cook for you.

Oh. I see.

Now we're moving into a broader spectrum.

The area of whatever turns you on, do your own thing and let it all hang out.

What are you talking about? Those phrases went out years ago.

Yeah, well, they all left their mark, didn't they? They set the standards.

Oh, yes.

There was no turning back after that little trio had been uttered. Look, all

want to do, for heaven's sake, is get a job.

It's not so unusual these days, is it? No, no.

Nothing is unusual today.

So let's go the whole hog.

Let's have a marriage.

Freedom of expression.

You go your way, I'll go mine.

You can bring your new boss home.

I'll bring my receptionist home. Our sons can run amok with the au pair and

we'll all have breakfast together in the mornings.

I've got 16 odd socks again.

I'm not very good at socks.

I haven't had my breakfast yet.

The kitchen is through there, adjoining the dining room.

Ria, I've given you everything.

Haven't I given you everything?

You've given me a hut in a suburban jungle with duck to deliver daily.

You've got Ruby to help.

Most women would give their right arm for all this. What more do you want?

I'd like my right arm back. please.

If only you could explain to me what you mean.

Well, if only I could explain to myself what I mean.

Am I an unreasonable man?

Am I?

Ah. Do I complain about your inefficiency?

Last night it was cremated chips with something dipped in cement.

What did I do?

I just sat there and prayed for my teeth.

Tell me what you want and you can have it.

I want a job. A new fridge? A new dishwasher?

A knitting machine. How about that?

Thanks. I'll knit myself an escape ladder.

Why can't you just be a wife?

You mean a housewife?

Yes. A housewife. Why not?

Why can't apples be bananas?

would, right.

Perhaps you could send me some breakfast.

Right.

For a chauffeur. Oh, yes. Could the gentleman possibly come in on Monday?

Yes, I can.

Sorry? Yes, I can come in on Monday, but I'm not a gentleman.

I imagine you already suspect that.

I see.

Well, the vacancy does specify... I'd like to speak to the manager, please.

One moment, please.

It's a lady.

She wants to be your chauffeur.

Look, having three endorsements hasn't done an awful lot for my morale.

I don't want to complete the picture of failure by being driven around by a

woman. No.

Sorry to keep you waiting.

I've checked with the manager and apparently he's just offered the

someone.

How can you let people lie to me like that?

Bloody funny farm, this house.

Breakfast?

If it's on the list of things you want to do, yes, please.

What are you thinking about?

I don't know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether

now a butterfly dreaming I'm a man.

Oh.

Well, at a guess, I would say that is the butterfly, and that looks remarkably

like a man.

You know, when you're looking and gazing like that, you remind me of one of

those creatures in a cage.

In a zoo.

You don't know what it is because it's just a heap of fur.

It just sits there.

Private and remote.

In the end, you don't know whether to offer it a banana or ask it if you can

have the next dance.

I'm sorry about this morning.

I just think the whole neighbourhood's sorry about this morning.

I'm not sorry for what I said or the way I said it.

You said it loudly, like a man who'd been trodden on by a shire horse.

A man has to be able to say what he feels in his own house.

Of course, as long as it doesn't filter into everybody else's house.

It's a toasted sandwich.

Fused together with a very brave tomato.

In fact, the fact it was being grilled, it managed to maintain a pleasant

expression, like me.

Just lay there quietly on a round of toast waiting to be squashed.

Another round of toast.

Like me.

You're suggesting that you are a helpless little tomato and that I am two

of ruthless toast.

Something like that.

Oh, my God.

Now what?

If you took this to the museum and put it in the volcanic rock section, it

wouldn't look out of place.

Here, break the news gently to your stomach with this.

You sure this is breakfast and not a suicide pact?

Really, I do do my best.

I know, I know.

I'm sorry again.

I mean, it's not as if I'm an ordinary woman.

No, no, you're not. We've already established you're a tomato.

Unusual woman. I've got things in my head. Yes, yes, indeed.

Thoughts, mainly.

Oh, I see.

That's just it. You don't think.

And when I think at the end of all those years, all those years of husbands and

sons and kitchens and laundry bags and washing bags and washing lines and

plastic bags, all I've got left is me.

Ria.

Not even the original me, but the thoroughly washed, rinsed, wrung out and

-dried me.

Ria, I don't think I'm going to like this conversation.

I can feel an argument cropping up between my heart and my lungs. There's a

buzzing in my ears, a traffic jam in my arteries, and my stomach is desperately

searching for somewhere to go.

None of my age die during conversations like this.

All right, we'll talk about something else.

Is that a male or a female butterfly?

Female.

I don't think I'm going to like this conversation either.

She looks... new.

It's not a she, it's an it.

A female it.

Now you're going to accuse me of discrimination.

You're going to accuse me of deliberately exterminating lady

After that, you'll accuse me of mass murder.

Soon the whole thing will get out of proportion. Instead of saying your

gone chasing butterflies, you'll be saying your father's gone chasing women.

I don't know where on earth you get all these ideas from.

They're all based on the experience of being man at the perpetual mercy of

woman.

Have I really been that bad?

No.

No. Of the... well, the several.

You've been the most acceptable.

That's why I wanted to marry you.

But there was Gillian Potter.

Two whole years of Gillian Potter.

Hitler in the 90s.

Rita. Rita Carmichael.

The one who dished out pound notes like cloakroom tickets and came to bed

entombed in laminin.

I used to have conversations like this with them.

It was like being put through the mincer.

They turned the verbal handle and I came out the other end.

Helpless. Lost.

Shredded.

That's a marble white.

What?

Over there.

When you get out of here, turn right and follow me.

I've got to do it. I've got to be myself.

You want to escape.

Kind of fly a bit. One extra little flap of your wings.

To the treetops.

That's where I must go. To the treetops.

There's nothing to stop me.

Adam and Russell are sensible, grown -up people. It's not as if I have young

children relying on my guidance and care.

I've done all that.

This is my reward.

I struggle through dental school, build up a practice, surrender myself to

fatherhood with the vague hope that I might enrich the world with my

and I end up firing a couple of buskers.

It was a gas. That's all. Just a gas. Yeah, right on.

You from some neighbouring planet.

What is a gas?

What is a gas?

It means it was a laugh.

Oh, I see. A laugh.

How unperceptive of me. Look, we're individuals, Dad. We're into freedom of

spirit. What about my spirit?

It's lying on the floor with an overdraft chained to its ankle.

It is obvious that you are without shame, principle, self -respect.

And money.

To get money, you have to work. We were working.

That isn't working, that's begging.

Now, what's the difference?

You think people's teeth, they give you money. We were playing people music,

they gave us money.

Oh, right.

Now, listen to me, Segovia.

I don't stand outside Woolworth's, pouncing on people with my drill. I am a

professional man.

principle that you get out of life, what you put into it.

Morning.

I can't find anything in this house.

First it's me gumption, then it's me J -claws, now it's me beeswax. What are

doing?

I'm being a housewife.

the ceiling down, please. I'd like to give it a dust over.

Why are you doing this to me?

Well, it's what you wanted, isn't it?

Why can't you be a housewife, you said?

I just don't want you to... Be anything else, I know.

Are my needs of any consequence in this house?

My sons want to go out busking, my wife wants to go out working, even the bloody

cat left home just because I wanted to sit in my own chair.

It's all to do with the times, Dad. You've got to go with the times.

When I go, it won't be with the times, it will be because of the times.

And before my time, I'm going to be one of those men who suddenly slump over

their boiled eggs, never to be heard again.

Ben, now you're being morbid.

First you're going to drop dead on a bus, then you're going to collapse

conversation, now you're planning to fall in your egg.

The whole family panics every time you travel, talk or eat.

I see. So I am the problem in this house, am I?

Go on.

Say it.

No, you are not the problem in this house. We love you. We respect you. It's

just that...

We've all reached a certain time in our lives, a time of discovery.

Russell and Adam have discovered that they can't get work and they can't keep

taking from you.

So we thought we'd take from somebody else.

And I've discovered that I'm very happy and very lucky and very grateful and

very... Bored?

Don't leave me lying in the road, crushed, reverse over me.

Now what? Look what you've done to your father.

You've run him over.

I will be back. I will be back.

Oh.

Hello. Hello, Ria.

Mrs Parkinson?

It's Leonard.

Leonard Dunn.

It's a... Well, it's more a... Yes, I thought I was right the first time.

Anyway, I am in need of a chauffeur.

I did, in fact, advertise because, well, I think I'd like a chauffeur. You know,

I've worked hard. I've reached the top of the... I've been banned.

Would you like to be a lady chauffeur?

Mine, in fact?

No, no, of course you wouldn't. I mean, forgive me, why would you?

You're happily doing what you want to do.

Fate again.

Some silly cow hadn't phoned up this morning.

Anyway,

I expect I'll be seeing you again.

Bye.

Bye.

Well?

We apologise to Dad about... busking. And? Well, he went on about things like

shame and embarrassment, you know, all that garbage. And we said he was too

inhibited and... And?

And then he saw... And?

What are you doing?

I'm going out.

I'm moving with the time.

I'm going to get my ear pierced and then I'm going to stand by the cinema.

you do a merry little dance, sing a merry little song and see if I can

the mortgage money.

It's just a gas.

Just a gas.