The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

PJ Neilan

It’s French. Really French. If you into symbolism, the way the French are, this film could be viewed in terms of a piece of flacid meat with a single eye narrating various experiences with five beautiful women. But it would be a bit much to say that the story is just a penis metaphor. It’s a French penis metaphor, which makes it all the more complex. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly centres on the relationships of a crippled fashion editor, Elle’s Jean Dominique Bauby (soon-to-be Bond villain Michael Amalric) and his heroic struggle to write the a book on his struggle for rehabilitation despite being paralysed from the neck down and having only the use of just a single eye.

The bulk of Julian Schnabel’s Oscar-nominated work is told in the first person style and from the protagonist’s point of view but it never feels claustrophobic and is consistently clever and moving in equal proportion. Bauby is the arrogant, philanderer, who is the darling of Paris fashion circles before he suffers a stroke while out driving his estranged young son and is soon moved to a convalescence home, where, bar the odd flash back, the film is set.

He is divorced from his impossibly good-looking wife Celine (the excellent Celine Desmoulins), presumably for having an affair with Josephine (Marina Hinds), yet another, impossibly good-looking, albeit a more selfish and flighty, femme du jour, who ultimately abandons him.

Bauby, today, is renowned as a courageous journalist and novelist, whose transformation from bastard to human being occurs before our eyes in this film. From the opening sequence, Bauby’s limitations become all-too-apparent and after his initial despair at the loss of his glamorous lifestyle, he decides to write, claiming his imagination is the only thing left intact.

There is plenty of humour for what could be termed a “heavy” work, particularly with his two doctors, speech-therapist Henriette and physical therapist Maria (the impossibly good-looking Marie Jose Croze and Olatz Lopez Garmendia respectively).

Bauby is fawned over repeatedly by the all the female characters in the film and his transformation from socialite to castaway puts their pouting in a new light, whereas before, it may have been because of what he was, now it seems to be for who he is becoming.

However, it is Claude (the impossibly good-looking Anne Consigny), the woman who assists Bauby in his novel through a painstaking and often agonising process of reading a speech alphabet waiting for a blink from Bauby to select the right letter, who falls completely for him.

Alas, it is not to be for Bauby and Anne but there is plenty of touching moments along the way and their adventure together is sad and real at once. An excellent turn from Max Von Sydow as Bauby’s father and skilful direction from Schnabel makes The Diving Bell and the Butterfly an emotive and profound cinematic experience, if you can see past the impossible good-looking Frenchness of it all and give the subtitles a chance (it’s French film).

8/10