The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Julian Schnabel is not just a painter dabbling in cinema, but an artist in film. Here, from a script by Ronald Harwood, he adapts the memoir of Jean-Dominique Bauby, and liberates the audience in the same way the book itself liberated Bauby from the “locked-in syndrome” caused by a major stoke. Only able to move one eyelid, the former editor of French Elle is taught by a therapist to communicate by blinking “yes” as she reads off letters, and with the help of another faithful and lovely amanuensis, dictates an affirmative book about his condition, only to die within days of its publication. This may seem like unpromising cinematic material, but turns out to be moving and exhilarating instead of depressing. The first part of the film is a subjective view of the condition, seen with the same blurred and limited vision that the patient experiences, but gradually we move outside to see Mathieu Amalric playing the role, and back inside to the memory and imagination that makes even such a limited life worth living. The loveliness of the ladies around Jean-Do -- Marie-Josee Croze, Anne Consigny, and Emmanuelle Seigner as his former lover and mother of his children -- are a big part of that sensory delight. And Max von Sydow gives a frail but towering performance as his father. The sum total is beautiful and uplifting, though sad and scary, like life itself. (2007, Images, n.) *8* (MC-92.)