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Synopsis
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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