The astonishing true-life story of Jean-Dominic Bauby - a man who held the
world in his palm, lost everything to sudden paralysis at 43 years old, and
somehow found the strength to rebound - first touched the world in Bauby's
bestselling autobiography The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (AKA La Scaphandre
et la papillon), then in Jean-Jacques Beneix's half-hour 1997 documentary of
Bauby at work, released under the same title, and, ten years after that, in this
Cannes-selected docudrama, helmed by Julian Schnabel (Basquiat) and adapted from
the memoir by Ronald Harwood (Cromwell). The Schnabel/Harwood picture follows
Bauby's story to the letter - his instantaneous descent from a wealthy and
congenial playboy and the editor of Elle Paris, to a bedbound, hospitalized
stroke victim with an inactive brain stem that made it impossible for him to
speak or move a muscle of his body. This prison, as it were, became a kind of
"diving bell" for Bauby - one with no means of escape. With the editor's mind
unaffected, his only solace lay in the "butterfly" of his seemingly depthless
fantasies and memories. Because of Bauby's physical restriction, he only
possessed one channel for communication with the outside world: ocular activity.
By moving his eyes and blinking, he not only began to interact again with the
world around him, but - astonishingly - authored the said memoir via a code used
to signify specific letters of the alphabet. In Schnabel's picture, Mathieu
Almaric tackles the difficult role of Bauby; the film co-stars Emmanuelle
Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze, Anne Consigny and Patrick Chesnais. ~ Nathan
Southern, All Movie Guide
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