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Mathieu Amalric on The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
By Fred Topel | Image property of Miramax Films.
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
For the main character in the movie, Mathieu Amalric has very little screen time in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. The entire film is shot from his character's point of view. He plays Jean-Dominique Bauby, the French editor of Elle who suffered a stroke that paralyzed his entire body. Communicating entirely with blinks, the camera provides his eye's point of view for most scenes.
Max von Sydow Talks The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
"If I want to look like somebody who had a stroke, that means five hours of makeup every morning and the stupidity of you can't shoot when you want because the makeup is a bit [off]," said Amalric. "With Julian [Schnabel] very quickly he said that's not possible. He shot films without any rehearsing, just like that. Any moment it can happen. He's not going to wait for makeup. So we had to find another way to be believable without makeup."
For the scenes where Bauby glimpses himself passing a mirror, or the rare cutaway shot from another point of view, they kept the makeup simple. "We found this idea of a dental prosthesis that was just argh, but I needed it to be painful be concentrating on something. And a little glue here and a bit of blood in the eye and wax."
Amalric provides the inner monologue of Bauby. He spontaneously improvised while the other actors were performing scenes to the camera. "We found it more interesting to not do the inner thoughts four months later during editing but do it at the same time. Where the set was, there was a little stage on the side with curtains. It was funny but we did the sound booth. It was like I was opening a theater and I was going there and I had a little place. I had a monitor, I could see what the actors were doing, the sounds I could hear and a mic."
That spontaneity might make it more Mathieu Amalric than Jean-Dominique Bauby, but the actor knew his stuff. "As we had spent lots of time with Julian trying to meet close friends of Jean Bauby, the women he had loved, each woman of course thinking she was the only one because he was like that. He continued to seduce but he was just a normal guy, not a saint. And reading the book again and all that, I was completely in the sense of humor of this guy, this desperate humor. So I tried to respect that. Julian said, 'Just say what happens in your mind. React.'"
For his on camera scenes, playing a stroke victim was not just an easy job lying in bed or sitting in a chair. "It hurt. In fact, if you try to stay without moving for a long time, very quickly, in fact you need to use all your muscles. It's true. You really had to contract all your muscles not to move. So in fact I was exhausted at the end of the day. And as he shoots without any rehearsing, I had to stay like that all the time. I tried to, and also to help the other actors, the kids for instance, so that they could sort of at one point start to believe that, why doesn't he move? They were forgetting."
Through all of that, Amalric kept his sense of humor. "I'm more of an actor's studio method. I just got a stroke. It's easy."
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is out in theaters now.
For the trailer, poster, more interviews, review and more movie info, go to The Diving Bell and the Butterfly Movie Page.
Fred Topel
Sources: Image property of Miramax Films.
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