MOVIE · 2007

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Drama112 min

After a devastating stroke leaves Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby almost completely paralyzed, he can communicate only by blinking one eye. Mathieu Amalric is Bauby, a 43-year-old magazine editor in mid-1990s France who begins dictating a memoir letter by letter from his hospital bed. As nurses, doctors, and loved ones work out how to reach him, the film moves between the confines of his condition and the memories, fantasies, and private observations still alive in his mind. Emmanuelle Seigner and Marie-Josée Croze are part of the circle around him as he turns that single remaining form of expression into a book.