Festival juries usually give prizes to worthy subject matter rather than style. But this French film, directed by the painter Julian Schnabel and written by the UK's Ronald Harwood, has both. A shoo-in for a prize of some sort, and certainly a candidate for the Palme d'Or.
It's adapted from the painstakingly written book by Jean-Dominique Bauby, the high-flying Paris-based editor of Elle who suffered a massive stroke and found himself paralysed and unable to speak. The bestseller was dictated letter by letter, with a helper going through the alphabet until Bauby winked with his remaining good eye when the right letter was reached.
It sold more than a million copies, and Schnabel's film may well sell more than a million tickets, since the performance of Mathieu Amalric as Bauby, in a part once reserved for Johnny Depp, is as honest as anyone could wish, whether frozen to his bed and voicing his exasperated thoughts or as the seemingly healthy young tyro from Elle.
Schnabel allows us to see only what Bauby sees in the first section of the film as he grapples with self-pity and suicide. Then he illustrates the power of Bauby's imagination as he dreams of himself skiing, surfing and making love. Marie-Josée Croze is the speech therapist who tries to help, Emmanuelle Seigner is his estranged but still loyal wife and Max Von Sydow has two major and highly effective scenes as his elderly and forgetful father reminding us how good he was for Bergman.
Even though Bauby is not presented as a wholly attractive man, the film's veracity and its determination not to be sentimental frequently strikes home.
Mister Lonely
**
Cannes Film Festival 2007
Mister Lonely, American Harmony Korine's rather weird version of an English country-house movie, partly shot in the UK, has Diego Luna as a Michael Jackson impersonator falling in love with Samantha Morton's Marilyn Monroe look-alike during a performance in a retirement home.
She suggests they move to a commune of impersonators in the Scottish Highlands. There they meet Denis Levant's Charlie Chaplin and James Fox as the Pope. A likely story indeed but, though all over the place as a film, it still manages to be fun. There's room for all sorts at Cannes.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
