French Film Club: Amour and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Two films that deal with love, loss and the aftermath of a stroke.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007, Director: Julian Schnabel)

This is the incredible true story of journalist and former editor-in-chief of French Elle magazine, Jean-Dominique Bauby, who after a suffering a massive stroke is left with a condition called locked-in syndrome. The film is based on his French memoir Le scaphandre et le papillon and describes his life both before and after the stroke. Bauby is mentally sound but completely paralysed, bar his left eye, which he learns to communicate with by blinking. The entire book was written by Bauby blinking his left eyelid as a patient transcriber recited a frequency-ordered alphabet. The transcriber would write down the correct letter once Bauby had blinked once, and so, after an incredibly long journey, a book was formed ten months later. It took about 200,000 blinks to write and an average word took approximately two minutes. An incredible feat. The film, starring Mathieu Amalric as Bauby, charts his life in hospital at Berck-sur-Mer, chronicling everyday events for a person with locked-in syndrome- you see his infected eye sewn up from his point of view as the screen gradually goes pitch black, you see him stuck in a heavy vintage diving suit flaying in the water, and you see happier times, his family playing on the nearby beach and the visitors he receives.

Amour (2012, Director: Michael Haneke)

This is a much more recent film, voted by the Guardian as top 10 best films of 2012. The film was screened at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the coveted Palme d'Or, a second win for director Michael Haneke. The film focuses on an octogenerian couple, Anne and Georges, who are retired music teachers and live in a relatively peaceful existence. That is until Anne sufferes a stroke which paralyses her on one side of her body. The story is based on an identical situation that happened in Haneke's family and the entire film is played out in one apartment based on his parent's home in Vienna.