All of Julian Schnabel’s films have been about the struggle to create art, writes Wendy Ide. In each of his biographical portraits, forces beyond the control of the artist block the creative process. It’s a theme that he explores most satisfyingly so far with his latest picture, an impressionistic interpretation of Jean-Dominique Bauby’s novel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

In 1995, Bauby, the Editor of Elle magazine, suffered a stroke that damaged his brainstem. When he woke up after 20 days of being unconscious he was a prisoner in his own body, suffering with the rare condition of “locked in” syndrome. Extraordinary camerawork at the opening of the film evokes Bauby’s return to the world, a woolly patchwork of frayed sounds and images drift across the screen like clouds; the urgency of a consultant’s interrogation cuts into the bleary shadows of a sleep so deep that it’s close to death itself.

We can hear Bauby’s thoughts (a voiceover by Matthieu Amalric, who stars as the stricken journalist), we struggle to focus through eyes, which are learning to see again. Brilliantly, Schnabel locks the audience in Bauby’s prison with him – it’s an uncomfortably claustrophobic and dazzlingly inventive bit of film-making that sets the tone for the rest of the picture.

It is not until nearly 20 minutes into the story that the camera comes out from behind Bauby’s eyes to explore the world around him – an institution that houses the most damaged remnants of human beings – and the flights of imagination into which the shattered Bauby escapes.

Suffering has not made a saint of Bauby. The empathetic speech therapist Henriette (Marie-Josée Croze) may be the first person to speak to him like a person rather than an object, but Bauby’s attention is initially more focused on her cleavage than her words. It is Henriette who teaches Bauby the painstaking method of communication that allows him to dictate, letter by letter, the book that has been so sensitively adapted by Ronald Harwood, the screenwriter.

It’s a handsome-looking film. All the female characters, even the medical professionals, are dewy-skinned beauties, their desirability perhaps enhanced for Bauby because he can no longer woo them with the ruthless efficiency he used to deploy. He is a vain man and it hurts his ego that kisses have been redirected to his cheeks, rather than the grotesque, saliva-slicked twist of his lips.

He sardonically skewers the indignities of his condition in biting prose, blinked out over long months, while on screen a dream-like collage of his memories of sunnier days unspools like a cherished home movie. It’s a gorgeously atmospheric and deeply affecting piece of work.

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