Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) (2007)
Average Rating: 8.2/10
Reviews Counted: 165
Fresh: 154 | Rotten: 11
Breathtaking visuals and dynamic performances make The Diving Bell and the Butterfly a powerful biopic.
Average Rating: 8.1/10
Critic Reviews: 47
Fresh: 44 | Rotten: 3
Breathtaking visuals and dynamic performances make The Diving Bell and the Butterfly a powerful biopic.
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Average Rating: 4/5
User Ratings: 148,019
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Movie Info
The astonishing true-life story of Jean-Dominic Bauby -- a man who held the world in his palm, lost everything to sudden paralysis at 43 years old, and somehow found the strength to rebound -- first touched the world in Bauby's best-selling autobiography The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (aka La Scaphandre et la Papillon), then in Jean-Jacques Beineix's half-hour 1997 documentary of Bauby at work, released under the same title, and, ten years after that, in this Cannes-selected docudrama, helmed
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Cast
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Mathieu Amalric
Jean-Dominique 'Jean Do... -
Emmanuelle Seigner
Céline Desmoulin, Céli... -
Marie-Josée Croze
Henriette Roi -
Anne Consigny
Claude -
Patrick Chesnais
Doctor Lepage -
Niels Arestrup
Roussin -
Olatz Lopez Garmendia
Marie Lopez -
Jean-Pierre Cassel
Father Lucien -
Marina Hands
Joséphine, Joséphine, ... -
Gerard Watkins
Doctor Cocheton -
Theo Sampaio
Théophile, Théophile, ... -
Fiorella Campanella
Céleste, Céleste, C?le... -
Talina Boyaci
Hortense -
Isaach De Bankolé
Laurent -
Emma de Caunes
Empresse Eugénie, Empr... -
Jean-Philippe Écoffey
Doctor Mercier, Noirtie... -
Nicholas Le Riche
Nijinski -
Anne Alvaro
Betty -
Françoise Lebrun
Madame Bauby -
Zinedine Soualem
Joubert -
Georges Roche
Fourneau -
Agathe De La Fontaine
Inès, Inès, In? -
Yves-Marie Coppin
Fisherman -
Francois Delaive
Nurse -
Franck Victor
Paul -
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Daniel Lapostolle
Auxiliary Nurse 1 -
Philippe Roux
Auxiliary Nurse -
Francis Filloux
Night Nurse -
Elvis Polanski
Jean-Do as a Child -
Max von Sydow
Young Papinou -
Sara Seguela
Paraplegic at Lourdes -
Vasile Negru
Violinist -
Marie Meyer
Model -
Ilze Bajare
Model -
Anna Chyzh
Model -
Antoine Breant
Jean-Baptiste Mondino's... -
Azzedine Alaia
Azzedine Alaia -
Michael Wincott
Michael Wincott -
Jean-Baptiste Mondino
Jean-Baptiste Mondino -
Lenny Kravitz
Lenny Kravitz -
Farida Khelfa
Farida Khelfa
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All Critics (165) | Top Critics (47) | Fresh (162) | Rotten (11) | DVD (19)
What's fascinating is that it is the very restrictions the story imposes on a director that allow Schnabel to turn it into such an eerie stunner of a movie.
Top CriticThe Diving Bell and the Butterfly is one of the best movies of 2007, but I'd argue it's also the one most in tune with what this season of goodwill and tolerance is supposed to be all about.
Optimistically, Schnabel would like to fill such an ordeal with color, music and hot nurses. Wedding himself to Bauby's real trauma, though, seems beyond him.
It's a subject and a film that perfectly blends the tragic with the triumphant.
Profoundly moving.
Director Julian Schnabel uses his skill as a painter to assemble a collage of fantastical images to reveal the exquisite physical wreck that Bauby has become.
An inventive, challenging, at times emotionally bracing film, audaciously staged and laudably anti-clichéd in its character particulars, yet destined to be more admired than beloved.
Julian Schnabel and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski fundamentally retool the template for the biopic to create one of the greatest portrayals of the mind's eye ever put to film. A discomforting but inspiring struggle for one enduring, final expression.
This uncommon story about an uncommon man is gentle, it is patient, it is compassionate and -- from a technical standpoint -- it is stunning.
Triumph of the human spirit to the Miramax, predictable in its crowd-pleasing, middlebrow vulgarity but with a few inventive, free-floating passages
[Schnabel is] drawn to the plight of the imagination struggling against limits, and Bauby's Beckett-like extremity has inspired his best film to date and the best film of the year.
Una película realmente conmovedora que logra trasladar a hermosas y sugestivas imágenes la experiencia real de un hombre paralizado física aunque no mentalmente.
Movies are a lot more than a bunch of pictures, no matter how ravishing, and the strong cast is key here, especially the three women who dominate Bauby's life.
Of all the movies generating award buzz this season, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was the most surprising to me and perhaps the most special.
The film is certainly rich in imagery, and its immersion into the subjective is a daringly successful conceit, but it never quite pulls all the pieces together.
Nothing in director Julian Schnabel's career so far has anticipated the sweetness, sadness, maturity and restraint of this lovely movie.
How does an actor act when he can use only one eye? You'll have to see the film to find out, but rest assured that there are sufficient flashbacks to give the remarkable Mathieu Amalric a chance to use the usual actor's tools as well.
An emotional tour de force that is simply stunning all around.
The camera techniques used actually give the audience just a hint of what it must be like to live with a fully aware mind, and one working eye.
Diving Bell is modishly slick, visually inventive and vaguely immaterial but ultimately moving because, well, how could it not be?
Audience Reviews for Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly)
Super Reviewer
While watching this film and it's narrative progress i was quite quickly reminded of Alejandro Amenabar's quite similar The Sea Inside which had Javier Bardem as a terminally ill man. These kind of stories reaches screens time to time and people will go and see them for the same reason they went to see James Cameron's Titanic. The fact is that people often love to see real life tragedies but with sugarcoated outfit.
Director Julian Schnabell and his lenser Janusz Kaminski are making exactly that kind of effect here visually. With experimental visual techniques they only distract us viewers from the story. I don't see any reason for all the visual gimmicks with topic like this. On the other hand i found Ronald Harwood's screenplay so banal that there is not that much to be saved here.
Schanbel is trying very hard to make an art-house impact with this film of his, but this is much closer to an Driving Miss Daisy than honest and true story about a man in a horrible medical condition.
Super Reviewer
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- Roussin: Hold fast to the human inside of you, and you'll survive.
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- Jean-Dominique 'Jean Do' Bauby: We're all children, we all need approval.
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- Jean-Dominique 'Jean Do' Bauby: A poet once said, "Only a fool laughs when nothing's funny"
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- Jean-Dominique 'Jean Do' Bauby: We're all children, we all need approval.
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Foreign Titles
- Schmetterling und Taucherglocke (DE)
- The Diving Bell And The Butterfly (UK)
