When I first saw the trailer for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (in French, Le scaphandre et le papillon), I figured it would be more of an art film than a narrative, wildly depressing, and was mostly excited to see it because I knew Julian Schnabel had won the Best Director prize at Cannes.

I was wrong, and pleasantly so.

The film tells the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the late French celebrated journalist and editor of Elle magazine, who suffered a massive stroke in 1995 at age 43. When he woke from his coma, he was paralyzed except for his left eyelid. Determined not to pity himself, he learned to communicate beyond a simple "blink once for yes, twice for no". Instead, someone would slowly recite the alphabet, and he’d blink when they reached the letter he wanted, thereby spelling out sentences. In this way, he authored the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly on which the movie was based. He died days after publication.

Here’s what makes this film unique: it is told mostly from Bauby’s perspective. Director Julian Schnabel, a painter whose previous films include biopic Basquiat and Before Night Falls, uses the camera to mimic Bauby’s point of view through one eye that blinks, tears up, scans the room, and moves in and out of focus, as well as turning into his imaginative interior life. Since we're inside his head, we're privy to his often humorous response to the doctors, therapists, and visitors which he's unable to vocalize.

But the film goes beyond the innovative, almost impressionistic - but still completely accessible - cinematography. Mathieu Amalric (who portrays Bauby) has turned in a performance of what my husband deemed “a triumph of acting”. After all, throughout most of the film, he acts with just one eye, the rest of him slumped and immobile. But this restriction doesn't impair his acting. The audience reacted in gasps and sniffles, especially when Bauby’s own housebound 92-year-old father (Max von Sydow) calls to wish him a happy birthday. Amalric’s eye’s expression (can there be such a thing?) broke my heart. Schnabel has somehow managed to combine an experimental premise with a engaging story that doesn't linger too long in any one spot, but is still full of emotion.

It’s almost impossible to know what goes on in the head of a paralyzed stroke victim, left mute and nearly expressionless; through Schnabel’s film, we catch an authentic glimpse that, for lack of a better word, truly inspires.