Jean- Dominque Bauby had everything, an exciting job as a fashion-magazine editor, children, a wife and mistress, before he had a stroke out in the French countryside and developed "locked-in syndrome" in which a person can sense and understand what goes on around him, but can only move very limited parts of his body. In Bauby's case, he dictated his whole autobiography using a system connected to blinks of his left eyelid.

The film, in French with subtitles, is an intriguing mix of comedy, tragedy, memories and fantasies, although like most films made of memoirs, is not immune tocontroversy(Which I can't comment on yet, not having read the source material, but, as a film about a man that gets shuttled from bed to wheelchair to hallway to terrace, it's Jean-Do's thoughts and feelings that give the film any buoyancy, but we can tell by watching that Jean-Do was quite a man.

It gets confusing sometimes as Bauby could see out of only one eye and is often surrounded by blondes with sunkissed skin; differentiating between them can be challenging sometimes, but this is not a hugely plotty movie in which we find out one is his long-lost sister or something so it hardly matters, but it would help if one had been a redhead.

--Erika Jahneke