The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)
(Le scaphandre et le papillon)
Country: FR/US
Technical: col 112m
Director: Julian Schnabel
Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze, Anne Consigny
Synopsis:
Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor of Elle magazine, suffers an exceptional stroke with leaves him paralysed save for his left eye. In the course of convalescence at a sanatorium in Berck-sur-mer, he uses the technique taught him by his speech therapist to dictate a book he had undertaken to write before being struck down.
Review:
Personal tragedy based on a real case, like the Spanish Mar adentro, and as with that film one is faced with the uncomforting feeling that there is going to be no happy ending. The handling, then, is all-important: it must be cinematically striking in some new way and not depend simply on pathos for effect. Here points are scored with the sustained first-person techniques of canted, out-of-focus p.o.v. shots and interior monologue, and with a fractured chronology which gradually builds in its flashback passages to the circumstances of the cerebral accident itself. Aspects of performance are excellent, though secondary; instead the cumulative impact of having so many human faces staring at us through the camera lens identifies us with Jean-Do's experience enough.
(Le scaphandre et le papillon)
Country: FR/US
Technical: col 112m
Director: Julian Schnabel
Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze, Anne Consigny
Synopsis:
Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor of Elle magazine, suffers an exceptional stroke with leaves him paralysed save for his left eye. In the course of convalescence at a sanatorium in Berck-sur-mer, he uses the technique taught him by his speech therapist to dictate a book he had undertaken to write before being struck down.
Review:
Personal tragedy based on a real case, like the Spanish Mar adentro, and as with that film one is faced with the uncomforting feeling that there is going to be no happy ending. The handling, then, is all-important: it must be cinematically striking in some new way and not depend simply on pathos for effect. Here points are scored with the sustained first-person techniques of canted, out-of-focus p.o.v. shots and interior monologue, and with a fractured chronology which gradually builds in its flashback passages to the circumstances of the cerebral accident itself. Aspects of performance are excellent, though secondary; instead the cumulative impact of having so many human faces staring at us through the camera lens identifies us with Jean-Do's experience enough.
(Le scaphandre et le papillon)
Country: FR/US
Technical: col 112m
Director: Julian Schnabel
Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josée Croze, Anne Consigny
Synopsis:
Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor of Elle magazine, suffers an exceptional stroke with leaves him paralysed save for his left eye. In the course of convalescence at a sanatorium in Berck-sur-mer, he uses the technique taught him by his speech therapist to dictate a book he had undertaken to write before being struck down.
Review:
Personal tragedy based on a real case, like the Spanish Mar adentro, and as with that film one is faced with the uncomforting feeling that there is going to be no happy ending. The handling, then, is all-important: it must be cinematically striking in some new way and not depend simply on pathos for effect. Here points are scored with the sustained first-person techniques of canted, out-of-focus p.o.v. shots and interior monologue, and with a fractured chronology which gradually builds in its flashback passages to the circumstances of the cerebral accident itself. Aspects of performance are excellent, though secondary; instead the cumulative impact of having so many human faces staring at us through the camera lens identifies us with Jean-Do's experience enough.