The film stars Jeremy Irons and John Lone, with Ian Richardson, Barbara Sukowa, and Annabel Leventon.

The story is loosely based on true events which involved French diplomat Bernard Boursicot and Chinese opera singer Shi Pei Pu.

Their affair lasts for 20 years, and they subsequently marry, with Gallimard all the while apparently unaware, or willfully ignorant, of the fact that in Peking opera Dan roles were traditionally performed by men.

David Henry Hwang's play M. Butterfly, based on the relationship between Bernard Boursicot and Shi Pei Pu, opened on Broadway in 1988, and was critically and financially successful.

[9] Randy Balsmeyer and Mimi Everett designed the title sequence, which features CGI created using Softimage 3D, and purchased around $30,000 worth of antique kimonos for it.

[13] Cronenberg was unable to accept the Genie Awards he won for Naked Lunch in person as he was filming in Hungary.

The website's critics consensus reads: "David Cronenberg reins in his provocative sensibility and handles delicate material with restraint, yielding a disappointing adaptation that flattens M. Butterfly into a tedious soap opera.

[30] Eleanor O'Sullivan, writing a 2½ star review in Asbury Park Press, criticized Irons as being miscast and that Gallimard should have had a previous gay relationship as it would have "given real force to his resolution to believe the man he loves is a woman".

[34] Roger Ebert gave the film 2½ stars and a thumbs up, but criticized that it "does not take hold the way the stage play did" and the two ending scenes "fly so recklessly in the face of plausibility that we're distracted".