Montreal: Each morning, by 5 a.m., cast and crew on the new Lea Pool feature film Blue Butterfly, about 100 people in all including locals, Brits and some 40 Canadians, leave their ocean-side hotel to travel deep into the Costa Rican rain forest. It’s an almost uninhabited place with three magnificient waterfalls. Once the crew arrives at Bri Bri, another very long day of shooting begins.

Producer Francine Allaire says everything about the jungle vegetation is luscious. It rains every day, mostly at night, and there are beautiful large-billed toucans in trees and the air is filled with the incessant chatter of monkeys.

The set is located in the small village of Puerto Viejo de Limon, no more than a dozen or so huts and teepees, southward on the Caribbean coast towards the border with Panama. Zip pants and insect repellant are de rigeur.

Blue Butterfly, a $12.5-million majority Canada/U.K. coproduction between Montreal’s Galafilm Productions (80%) and Global Arts Productions of the U.K., tells the story of a terminally ill 10-year-old boy with brain cancer, played by rising Canadian actor Marc Donato. The boy’s one last dream is to catch the most beautiful butterfly on earth, the legendary Blue Morpho, found only in the jungles of Central and South America.

His single mom, played by Pascale Bussieres (Petites Coupures, Repetition), badgers an internationally renowned and crusty entomologist, played by William Hurt, to make the dream come true. Monsoon rains and wild rivers, exhaustion and romance follow, but the illusive Blue Morpho resists.

The story threads a fine line between adult drama and family action-adventure, says Allaire. And it was this kind of complex treatment requirement that prompted the producers to hire filmmaker Pool (Lost and Delirious). ‘It’s something we wanted to do for our children and for ourselves as parents. We want layers [of narrative] and subtext that satisfy us film buffs, too,’ she says.

Allaire, who developed the project, says she had a gut feeling Oscar-winner Hurt (Kiss of the Spider Woman, Gorky Park) was the right person for the entomologist role right from the beginning. And she told his agent the same thing three and a half years ago. ‘He was raised all over the world because his father was a diplomat, so he’s not the American who has never been outside his country,’ says Allaire.

Affinity for things Canadian

Hurt certainly appears to have a real affinity for Canadian projects. He’s the lead alongside Catherine Deneuve in the Canada/France coproduction Au plus pres du paradis (2002). He appeared this season in the Quebec TV drama Riviere-des-Jeremies (2001), in the Sturla Gunnarsson film Rare Birds (2001), filmed in Newfoundland, and in the Canada/U.K. historical drama Varian’s War. ‘He’s also very comfortable with insects. And that helps,’ says Allaire.

Despite the more than 100-degree heat, Hurt had to stay cool when Georges Brossard, the film’s consulting entomologist, would place a giant beetle on his arm.

Blue Butterfly, scripted by London-based Pete McCormack, is inspired by a real-life adventure lived by Brossard, who is the founder of Montreal’s Insectarium and host of the well-traveled Pixcom Productions/Cineteve series Insectia.

Toronto-based actor Raoul Trujillo plays a native character and Hurt’s best friend in Blue Butterfly.

Emmy Award-winning actor Donato (The Sweet Hereafter), from Toronto, also stars alongside Michelle Pfeiffer, Renee Zellweger and Robin Wright in the upcoming WB release White Oleander.

Bring your own generators

The crew brought along its own power sources. ‘Costa Rica is a fabulous location, but the infrastructure is quasi-inexistent,’ says Allaire, who is producing alongside Arnie Gelbart and Claude Bonin on behalf of Galafilm and Michael Haggiag of Global Arts. The two companies teamed earlier on the successful tween series The Worst Witch.

Pierre Mignot, who has worked on 10 of Robert Altman’s films, is the cinematographer. A second unit primarily handles macros and beauty shots.

The movie’s GCI and FX sequences are being produced by Media Principia, a Daniel Langlois company, and represent a major investment, in the range of $1.5 million. ‘At this price it’s going to be a spectacular film,’ says Gelbart. And anyway, one can’t exactly wrangle a butterfly.

The Costa Rican leg of the 39-day shoot concludes May 3, followed by three additional weeks of location and studio filming in Montreal and region through to early June.

Serge Bureau is the shoot’s designer. Ivan Sharrock (The English Patient, Gangs of New York) of the U.K. is the chief sound recordist. Michel Arcand is the picture editor and Covitec is providing lab services.

Film Tonic will distribute in Canada. Delivery is set for January 2003.

Blue Butterfly’s new international sales agent will be revealed at the 54th Cannes International Film Festival, May 15-26.

-www.galafilm.com