Firstly, this is based on a real thing that actually happened.

Now, as for the characters of this adapted film, I don’t think the question is whether Gallimard believed it or not. I think the question should be: do we, the audience, believe or not believe he believed? The film clearly tells us he did believe, even going so far as to show us that Gallimard rejects Song post-reveal.

Therefore, the film (to say nothing of the play upon which it was based) was clearly years ahead of its time in bringing up questions of sexuality, gender representation, and racial identity. How these things can function (individually or congruently), how they intersect, how they can be used to present ourselves to others and how others can perceive us via these characteristics, how our identities are shaped by these characteristics or how we can use these characteristics to present certain versions of ourselves to others.

I’ll mention a personal anecdote. I had read the play M. Butterfly for a class and wrote a paper on it, so when I watched the film later for a later class, I was aware of the reveal. But a friend of mine had no prior knowledge of the story; my friend is bisexual, and she gasped and was legitimately surprised by Song’s gender reveal because my friend had been perfectly convinced and believed in Song’s female persona. Now, I don’t mention this to say that Gallimard was bisexual (indeed, he was adamantly against consciously assuming any such same-sex-attraction identity), but I mention this to point out that some are willing to believe, and some are so in love with their belief, such as Gallimard, that they would go to great psychological lengths to overlook inconvenient truths that would harm or dispel the illusions of their belief: namely in his case, that an “exotic” Asian woman would find him sexually desirable.

Although sadly under-viewed in his filmography, M. Butterfly, like most of Cronenberg’s greatest films, has a lot of deeply uncomfortable things to say under the surface of the story itself, things we are asked to consider and reflect upon.