The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - out now
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
Directed by celebrated painter Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly tells the remarkable tale of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), the 43-year old Parisian fashion editor and playboy who, at the zenith of wealth and success was paralysed by a stroke and suffered from “locked in syndrome”, where he is alive and conscious but unable to communicate with the world.
Bauby wakes up in hostpital from a coma to find himself paralysed from head to toe and unable to speak. The only part of his body he can move is his left eyelid, which he uses to communicate. The pretty speech therapist (Marie-Josee Croze) recites the alphabet in the order of most frequently used letters, and Bauby chooses a letter by blinking. Thus, letter by letter, blink by blink, he ‘dictates’ his extraordinary memoir on which this film is based.
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Love in the Time of Cholera is based on the sumptuous, florid novel by Nobel Prize winning Columbian author Gabriel García Márquez. The film adaptation by Mike Newell, who is best known for Four Weddings and a Funeral and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, just goes to show that the best novels rarely work well on the big screen.