NYFF. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

"With their forthrightly idiosyncratic central voices and struggling-artist self-consciousness, [Julian] Schnabel's films should rightfully be overly precious, or for the filmmaker, furtively self-aggrandizing - the scenester conveying artistic kinship with diseased or disabled poets, painters and writers," suggests Michael Koresky at Reverse Shot. "Yet as he did with the elegantly designed and finely humane Before Night Falls, Schnabel again manages to overcome such kneejerk responses with [The Diving Bell and the Butterfly; site], which looks at the world and its very self with genuine awe."

Schnabel specializes in "something like a Hollywood blockbuster version of a European art film," writes Leo Goldsmith at Not Coming to a Theater Near You. "In biographing Jean-Michel Basquiat, Reinaldo Arenas, and now Jean-Dominique Bauby, Schnabel combines a style of excess and personal vision with excellent 'name' talent and high production values. It is a strange hybrid, but an often beautiful one, with a visual sensibility that virtually bleeds off the screen, even as it sometimes occasionally seems to distract from the stories themselves."

Online viewing tip. IFC's got video from the press conference.

Earlier: Reviews from Cannes and Toronto.

Posted by dwhudson at October 14, 2007 1:32 PM