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The Diving Bell and the Butterfly 12A SCREENINGS The film begins like the book. A white, blinding light, a dance of colour in soft focus. Strangers faces appear, talking to us, to him. Jean-Dominique Bauby learns he is in a hospital, hooked up to machines to help him breathe. A man dressed as a doctor comes towards him. He gives him a frank assessment of the situation. Bauby has had a cerebro-vascular accident and has been in a coma for several months. He tries to answer but no one seems to hear him. The doctor explains he is suffering from an extremely rare condition. "Locked-in syndrome" compromises the brain stem, which acts as a relay between the brain and the nervous system. The patient is entirely paralysed, as if locked inside himself, his whole body trapped by a sort of diving bell. In Bauby's case, only his left eyelid is functional. It is his last window on the world and his only method of communication. One blink for yes, two for no. The brain itself, on the other hand, is in perfect working order. Jean-Dominique Bauby can hear, understand, remember but he can no longer speak. Besides the left eyelid, there are two things that still function - imagination and memory. The butterfly. As Jean-Dominique Bauby's interior dialogue swings from funny to tragic, from wisdom to revolt and back again, he decides to tell his story. He memorizes the sentences of his story beforehand, then, using the system developed by his speech therapist, dictates them letter by letter, by blinking when the correct letter is pronounced out loud... BBFC advice: Contains sexualised nudity and one use of moderate language "After a stroke, the editor-in-chief of French Elle went from playboy to paralysed. The Diving Bell And The Butterfly is his moving story. Based on the memoirs of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), it shows him waking in hospital to discover his fate and realising that he can only move one eye. Hostile and humorous in equal measure, he eventually agrees to communicate by blinking, and dictates an entire book this way. The result is a deeply affecting film. Director Julian Schnabel achieves a similar level of intensity as he did in Before Night Falls, mainly by sticking close to his protagonist at all times. In The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, he really puts us in Jean-Dominique Bauby's shoes, showing most of the action through his one good eye. We laugh with Bauby as he narrates his scathing, irreverent thoughts on the doctors and nurses, wince with him when his infected eye is sewn up, and weep with him when he’s unable to speak to his children. There's nothing overtly sentimental about this film - Bauby's caustic wit keeps that firmly at bay – it's just a genuinely moving watch, all the more human due to Bauby's self-deprecation and frank, confessional approach. One of those it-could-happen-to-you dramas, it'll get you pondering on life, death and illness but leave you with a wry, tearful smile and a determination to live life to the full. And all this without need for a narration from Morgan Freeman – bonus." "...Equally extraordinary is how Bauby’s story has reached the screen. Director Julian Schnabel shoots much of the film as if through the left eye of the bed-ridden Bauby. We share the restrictions of his mobility and the frustration this brings. We hear, through voiceover, the words that exist in Bauby’s mind but never pass through his lips. Occasionally Schnabel offers us external shots of Bauby in his wheelchair with his family and friends. More effective, however, are memory sequences of a fully-fit Bauby shaving his housebound father (Max von Sydow) or visiting Lourdes with an ex-girlfriend. It is a brave but not intimidating approach. Indeed, the visual style itself becomes the key element that allows us to understand and admire the way that Bauby’s mental vivacity (the ‘butterfly’) overcomes his physical limitations (the ‘diving bell’)." UK RELEASE 8 February 2008 DIRECTOR Julian Schnabel CAST Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josee Croze, Anne Consigny, Patrick Chesnais, Niels Arestrup, Olatz Lopez Garmendia, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Max von Sydow RUNNING TIME 111 minutes COUNTRY France / USA LANGUAGE French (sutbitled) official film website
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