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The Diving Bell and the Butterfly Movie Review

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a 2007 French biographical drama film directed by Julian Schnabel and starring Mathieu Amalric. It’s an overrated bore.

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“We’re all children,

we all need approval“

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The film tells the true story of Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby who suffers a stroke and has to live with a paralyzed body. The only way he can communicate is with his left eye. Yes, this is yet another one of those films about a person living with some kind of syndrome (in this case it is locked-in syndrome), and just how heartbreaking and difficult life can be for those people, but that one can never lose hope and still try to live life to the fullest, etc, etc.

I myself am getting really tired of these movies. There is nothing new under the sun here, nothing at all. It’s just a series of familiar sequences that are only made different by its more artistic and intriguingly edited approach, but still this is yet another French movie that I found extremely overrated as it’s above all else a chore to sit through, at least it was to me.

That’s because I did not care about the characters as much as I should have, though the acting performances are uniformly strong. The storyline did not appeal to me personally as it had nothing of substance to say, and the originality was sorely lacking. The cinematography is great and the film is technically very accomplished, but there is not much to be found in terms of either plot or emotion.

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Yes, the emotion is subdued more so than you would expect for this type of movie, but that still had an adverse effect on me as it made me feel cold and unresponsive. There are some strikingly gorgeous scenes to be found here, especially those set in the past, and sometimes the movie did seem quite artistic, but most of it was dull and uninteresting. Needless to say, its acclaimed status is to me undeserved.

Although The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is technically superb, especially in terms of cinematography, acting and editing, it’s still a chore to sit through. It’s a very boring movie that has nothing new to say about its subject matter. It felt very familiar, unoriginal and thus extremely overrated.

My Rating – 3

You can get this movie on Amazon.