| This week's Tribune review : THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY [7/10] |
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| Monday, 04 February 2008 | |
 Fr/USA 2007 Starring : Mathieu Amalric, Marie-Josée Croze, Anne Consigny Director : Julian Schnabel ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ EVER since premiering at Cannes last May - where Manhattan artist-turned-filmmaker Julian Schnabel was named Best Director - The Diving Bell and the Butterfly has been showered with awards and acclaim. Most recently Schnabel picked up the Golden Globe from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, that body also naming his movie the best non-English-language feature of the year. And the film has picked up four Oscar nominations: for Schnabel, his editor Juliette Welfling, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and scriptwriter Ronald Harwood, who adapted the best-selling memoir of the same title by Jean-Dominique Bauby. Bauby's is one of those "stranger than fiction" (indeed, much more terrible than fiction) life-stories. He was a successful Paris magazine-editor until being felled by a severe stroke which left him with Locked-In Syndrome, able to communicate only by the blinking of a single eyelid. Despite this cataclysmic handicap, Bauby was able to dictate - one letter at a time - his book, dying of heart failure only a couple of days after its publication. At one stage Hollywood was set to film Bauby's memoir in English, with Johnny Depp in the lead Thankfully, despite Schnabel's nationality, the finished movie is in French, with Gallic rising-star Amalric in the lead role. On paper it sounds rather like the kind of triumph-over-adversity role which is invariably a magnet for Oscars. Amalric, however, hasn't even been nominated - largely because he himself very rarely appears on screen. We see through his one, semi-glazed eye for the majority of the running-time - a technique which, thanks largely to Kaminski's camerawork, works brilliantly to put us, almost literally, into Bauby's shoes. Schnabel and Harwood punctuate these sequences with flashbacks to Bauby's "normal life", and also illustrate his imaginative flights of fancy as he ruminates on his plight. He sees himself encased in his body like a diver in a heavy suit (not a "bell", in fact, despite the title), but in his mind he remains as free as the lightest papillon. These fantasy-sequences are very much hit-and-miss affairs, and seem incorporated as much to give Schnabel (and us) a break from concentrating so fixedly on Bauby's locked-in perspective. The film - which has much humour to leaven what is clearly a tragic story - actually works better the more time we directly share the experiences of its irrepressibly raffish protagonist (who evidently had a different kind of "roving eye" long before his incapacitation). It's a solid, absorbing presentation of remarkable material - but does seem to have been a little over-garlanded in certain quarters: only the heartstoppingly beautiful opening and closing credits, designed by Schnabel himself, really justify the extravagant superlatives which have been heaped on the picture. It's only in these margins that Schnabel allows his imagination to really soar free, and so audiences are very strongly advised to remain in their seats as they dab away their tears. Neil Young 29th January 2008  THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY : [7/10] : US/Fr 07 : Le scaphandre et le papillon : Julian SCHNABEL : 112m (BBFC) seen at Vue cinema, Leicester : 6th Oct 2007 : press show (Cinemadays event)
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