Reel Alternatives’ next movie on Monday, May 5 is The Diving Bell and The Butterfly, winner of Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival and Golden Globe winner for Best Director and Best Foreign Film.

By turns dreamlike, brave and breathtaking, Diving Bell and The Butterfly is the must-see adaptation of Jean-Dominique Bauby’s affecting memoir. Once the successful fashion editor of Elle France and a carefree womanizer, Bauby awoke one day to find himself a prisoner in his own body. He had been paralyzed by a massive stroke that rendered him powerless to move a muscle, except his left eyelid.

This gem of a film follows Bauby’s story, recreating his subjective agony and his most intimate memories. His wife, whom he left a year before the stroke, selflessly attends him and goes so far as to translate correspondence between him and a new lover. He wrestles with feelings of regret over missed opportunities for happiness, though he mostly feels guilty for not having spent more time with his children.

Bauby’s nurses develop an ingenious, if exhausting method of communication, through which he painstakingly writes his memoirs. By listening to the letters of the alphabet and blinking when the correct one is uttered, he is able to preserve his final link to the outside world, the winking butterfly that frees him from the diving bell of his broken body. As we are shown more of Bauby’s life in flashback, the lines between dream, memory, hallucination and consciousness begin to blur, granting us insight into the mind of someone in a near-vegetative state. Schnabel’s painterly creativity runs free here, showing us dense colours and visions limited only by his (and Bauby’s) powers of imagination. Rated PG; in French with English subtitles.

Diving Bell and The Butterfly, is sponsored by Macs@Work and will be shown at the Capitol Twin Cinema at 7 p.m. on May 5. Advance tickets are $7 at Muskoka Country Furniture and Gifts on Main Street, or $8 at the door if available.

Reel Alternatives is also proud to sponsor the Huntsville High School’s Short Films With a Message on May 15 at the Algonquin Theatre. Tickets are $10. This special night offers the chance to take a peek into the creative forces of the filmmakers of the future, featuring student submissions throughout Muskoka and Orillia. For more information visit algonquintheatre.ca.