Have you ever seen a film about a severely disabled or dying person, from Helen Keller to Christy Brown, that wasn’t moving? The artistic challenge is to portray such stories without going for the easy option of just tugging on the audience’s heartstrings. The American artist and director Julian Schnabel (Basquiat), along with his cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski, have taken the hoary old hospital/disabled drama and given it an art-house makeover, producing something moving and visually stunning. Instead of the usual grief-fest, we get food for thought – what it means to be human is the central theme of the film.

This is the true story of how Jean-Dominique Bauby came to write his memoir, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. He was a handsome lothario about town and editor of French Elle. At the age of 43, he suffered a severe stroke that left him paralysed. The only thing he could move was his left eye. Where most disabled-person dramas present the protagonist from the outside, Schnabel shows the world through the eye of Bauby, whose thoughts we can hear. When he blinks, the camera blinks. The effect is to give us a harrowing intimacy.

The film begins with Bauby waking up from his coma in hospital and being told he’s suffering from a rare condition called “locked-in syndrome”. Schnabel captures brilliantly the utter helplessness and tedium Bauby suffers. It’s like being buried alive, only your body is the casket. Things look up for Bauby when he is appointed two beautiful therapists to help with speech and eating. Looking at their cleavage, he asks: “Am I in heaven?”

His speech therapist, Henriette (Marie-Josée Croze), teaches him to communicate with the world by reciting to him a special alphabet, at which he can blink when the chosen letter is arrived at. Christy Brown thought he had a tough time with his toe; this man manages to dictate a whole book about his condition by blinking. I love the way Schnabel presents Bauby writing his memoir without the usual display of “the human spirit conquers all” triumphalism.

Although you have to admire Bauby’s determination and tenacity, he doesn’t really have much to say about his condition, other than that it’s pretty horrible. Then again, he was the editor of a fashion magazine, not a French philosopher. His is a condition that goes to the very heart of what it means to be alive. Still, he finds freedom in memory and imagination, which allows Schnabel to light up the screen.

What’s more, Schnabel and the screenwriter, Ronald Har-wood, make no attempt to disguise the fact that Bauby was a pretty awful guy who dumped his wife for his mistress. In one poerful scene, we see Bauby’s wife (Emmanuelle Seigner) having to listen to his mistress talking to him on the phone, then translating his response.

The film is full of wonderful performances – and Mathieu Amalric, as Bauby, manages to be more expressive with one roving eyeball than most actors are with their whole faces.

12A, 112 mins

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