The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)
March 18th, 2008
Everybody likes this movie except me. C’est la vie!
In this piece of narcissistic claptrap, a womanizing fashion-magazine editor suffers a stroke and becomes “locked-in.” He can only move his left eye.
This part is quite good. Most of it is shown from the editor’s point of view, so that we only see people who are standing in front of us. And we see ourselves blink, like a shutter coming down: one for yes, two for no. Not to mention having our useless right eye sewn shut.
But fear not! Gorgeous women rush to the editor’s side, eager to recite the alphabet hundreds of times a day so he can blink when they get to the right letter. Like selfless human typewriters they laboriously transcribe his inspirational book about himself, on which this movie is based.
They do it for love! They do it for fashion! They do it because they are gorgeous! They do it because they are French!
In case you start wondering, ‘who is the butterfly?’ And thinking, as I did, that it might turn out to be the mysterious woman, possibly his one true love, the one who cannot bear to visit him…
Wrong! It’s him, of course. He is his own butterfly.
What a bunch of poppycock. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.
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