Julian Schnabel won Best Director at the last Cannes Film Festival for his stunning success in bringing the memoirs of editor Jean-Dominque Bauby (Mathieu Amatric) to the screen. After a violent stroke, Bauby finds himself immobilized by “locked-in-syndrome” and forced to communicate with the outside world using the only muscles he maintains control over—his eyes. Schnabel strives to recreate the experience of paralysis using surreal picture morphs and dreamlike collages of memories and fantasies, distancing the viewer somewhat from Bauby’s consciousness even as he strives to dig deeper into the editor’s subjective experience.