The Ventnor Film Society Present … The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
Nothing in director Julian Schnabel’s career so far has anticipated the sweetness, sadness, maturity and restraint of this lovely movie.
It is a very moving and deeply satisfying version of the bestselling 1997 memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby, the 43-year-old Parisian fashion magazine editor who, at the very height of wealth, health and success was paralysed by a stroke and suffered from “locked-in syndrome”.
He could hear and see perfectly, but could not move or speak.
The thing he could do was blink his left eyelid and, with ferocious effort, learned to blink in a special alphabet-code and by this means “dictate” his extraordinary memoir.
Bauby was submerged in a diving bell of physical immobility: that precious, fluttering eyelid was a butterfly of freedom and hope.
Dir: Julian Schnabel France 2007 112 mins Cert 12
Cast: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marina Hands
Prices
Venue: Ventnor Winter Gardens
Single Ticket: £4.50 (£3.50 Concessionary)
Concessionary tickets are available to students, senior citizens and the unwaged.
All VFS presentations (apart from special events) take place on Tuesday evenings and start at 7.30pm. There is a bar in the building and guests may take drinks into film presentations. All are welcome; you do not have to belong to the Society in order to attend.
