In 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of French Elle, suffered, at the age of forty-three, a massive stroke that left him able to move nothing but his left eye.
The little book that Bauby composed by blinking while a secretary ran through the alphabet serves as the basis for this astounding movie, which was directed by Julian Schnabel and written by Ronald Harwood.
At first, we see only what Bauby (Mathieu Amalric) sees: a blur of faces, which turn out to be the doctors and nurses at the hospital, who float into view in fearsome closeup, like deep-sea monsters.