Stars: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josee Croze, Anne Consigny, Jean-Pierre Cassell, Marina Hands, Max Von Sydow, Isaach De Bankole, Patrick Chesnais, Lopez Garmendia, Emma De Caunes, Jean-Philippe Watkins, Nicolas Le Riche

Director: Julian Schnabel

Summary: THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY tells the remarkable tale of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the world-renowned editor of French ELLE magazine, who suffered a stroke and was paralyzed by the inexplicable 'locked in' syndrome at the age of 43. Bauby's only way of communicating with the outside world was by blinking with one eye.

Celebrated painter and filmmaker Julian Schnabel's third feature finds him reaching new artistic heights with this audacious and personal biopic, based on the best-selling memoir of the same name. The film tells the remarkable tale of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), the world-renowned editor of French ELLE magazine, who suffered a stroke and was paralyzed by the inexplicable 'locked in' syndrome at the age of 43. Bauby's only way of communicating with the outside world was by blinking with one eye, and after several dedicated helpers--a string of impossibly beautiful women (Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josee Croze, Olatz Lopez Garamendia, Anne Consigny)--helped him to speak through this seemingly irrelevant gesture, he began to produce the words that would form his memoir. Along the way, as he swam in and out of consciousness, memories from his past swelled into the present, resulting in a cinematic experience that is at once heartbreaking and hopeful.
Schnabel somehow manages to convey Bauby's internal life with remarkable clarity, employing first-person perspective, striking cinematography (by the always great Janusz Kaminski), and Amalric's pained, life-affirming monologues. The result is a wholly original experience, a painful and tender portrait of a life that is made all the more exhilarating because of its close proximity to death.

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The seemingly claustrophobic story of a man imprisoned in his paralysed body becomes a dazzling and expansive movie about love, imagination, and the will to live. After a stroke, Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric, Kings and Queen) can only move his left eye--and through that eye he learns to communicate, one letter at a time. With the help of his speech therapist (Marie-Josee Croze, Munich) and a stenographer (Anne Consigny, Anna M.), Bauby writes the stunning memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. But such a plot summary makes the movie sound like lofty, self-important medicine--far from it. Director Julian Schnabel (Basquiat, Before Night Falls), working from an elegant screenplay by Ronald Harwood (The Pianist) and with an outstanding cast (which also includes Frantic's Emmanuelle Seigner as Bauby's neglected wife), has created a movie as engrossing and hypnotic as a thriller, a movie that wrestles with mortality yet has stubborn streaks of dark humour and eroticism, that portrays a man who overcomes unimaginable obstacles but refuses to paint him as a saint. Schnabel was once dismissed as a pompous and overblown painter, but he's crafted an intimate visual poem, a humble sonata about life at its most fragile. --Bret Fetzer

Aspect Ratio:	16:9 Anamorphic Wide Screen
Main Language:	French
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	The making of THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY, 'A Cinematic Vision' featurette, Charlie Rose interviews Julian Schnabel , Trailer , Photo gallery
Year:	2007
Release Date:	June 9, 2008
Runtime:	112 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	P 923601000
Keywords:	Bell, General, Butterfly, French, Drama, Diving
Genre:	Drama