Forty-three year old Elle magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby - Jean-Do to his friends - awakens not knowing where he is. He is in a Berck-sur-Mer hospital, where he has been for the past several weeks in a coma after suffering a massive stroke. Although his cognitive facilities are in tact, he quickly learns that he has what is called locked-in syndrome which has resulted in him being almost completely paralyzed, including not being able to speak. One of his few functioning muscles is his left eye. His physical situation and hospitalization uncomfortably bring together the many people in his life, including: Céline Desmoulins, his ex-lover and mother of his children; Inès, his current lover; and his aged father who he calls Papinou. Among his compassionate recuperative team are his physical therapist Marie, and his speech therapist Henriette. Henriette eventually teaches him to communicate using a system where he spells out words: she reads out the letters of the alphabet in descending order of their use in the French language, and he blinks his functioning left eye when she reaches the appropriate letter. Although frustrating at start, he learns to communicate effectively but slowly using this method, so much so that with the help of Claude, a full time translator, he decides on the monumental and seemingly impossible task to keep to his pre-injury commitment of writing a book, changing its focus to life in his current state.
May 9, 1997
February 26, 1940 in Tunis, Tunisia
23 February 1970, Montréal, Québec, Canada
25 May 1963, Alençon, Orne, France
9 September 1976, Paris, France
17 April 1957, Thiers, Puy-de-Dôme, France
26 May 1964, New York City, New York, USA
January 29, 1972 in Sartrouville, Seine-et-Oise , France
25 October 1965, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France
March 27, 1972 in Paris, France
12 April 1998, Paris, France
12 August 1957, Abidjan, Ivory Coast
March 18, 1947 in La Garenne-Colombes, Hauts-de-Seine, France
1988 in Riga, Latvian SSR, USSR [now Latvia]
8 July 1959, Lausanne, Switzerland
21 January 1958, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
July 21, 1949 in Aubervilliers, Seine [now Seine-Saint-Denis], France

