French director Jean-Jacques Beineix, best know for his films Diva and Betty Blue, hasn’t amassed a huge directorial output over the years nor has he achieved a terribly strong following, but his work stands as an important entry in international cinema.

Cinema Libre Studio is doing its part to increase awareness of Beineix, releasing six DVD titles as part of The Jean-Jacques Beineix Collection over the next several months, a number of which have been previously unreleased in the United States.

The first release is Locked-In Syndrome, which actually includes two other films as well. This collection is a bit of a hodgepodge, with two documentaries and one short film — Beineix’s first — included, but the variety presented shows Beineix’s skill whether in narrative or nonfiction form.

Locked-In Syndrome, produced for television in 1997, documents the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of French ELLE magazine who was hit with an unexpected stroke and awoke from a coma with a fully functioning brain, but an inability to move, save for the muscle in his left eyelid. He learned to communicate with that eyelid using an alphabetical system correlated to blinking, and wrote a memoir, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Bauby’s story was told in the stunningly beautiful 2007 film of the same name, and Beineix’s Locked-In Syndrome serves as a wonderful companion piece. The documentary utilizes extremely sparse narration, opting instead to place the viewer at Bauby’s bedside, watching as he struggles to communicate and write his book in the necessarily painstaking process.

The 26-minute film is the clear highlight of this DVD — it’s both captivating and heartbreaking, and reveals Beineix’s deft hand at crafting an insightful, but not intrusive, documentary.

Also included is Beineix’s first film, a darkly whimsical 15-minute short called Mr. Michel’s Dog, released in 1977. Michel is both lonely and poor, so he begins to pretend he owns a dog, garnering scraps from the butcher that he actually eats himself. Trouble is, the neighbors in his apartment are annoyed with the make-believe animal’s incessant barking.

Article Author: Dusty Somers

Dusty Somers hails from Seattle, and is a journalism student at the University of Oklahoma. He enjoys spending time and watching films with his wife, and looks forward to their imminent return to the great Northwest.

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