The Diving Bell and the Butterflyis almost as moving as film critics said. Only the heartless will fail to shed a tear at the scene in which the paralysed Jean-Do pleads soundlessly with a medic not to close his infected eye, even as the stitches go in; or the one where he sees his 11-year-old son cry at the state to which his father has been reduced; or at the scenes with Jean Do's own father, played beautifully by Max Von Sydow, Frank McNally
But as is often the case with a film based on real events, you may be better off not to read the book beforehand; and to avoid anything else that touches on the historic reality. If you have managed that so far, and still plan to see the movie, you should probably stop reading this column now too. NOW, I said. Otherwise, on top of the emotional demands that Jean Do's plight makes on viewers, you may also be forced to take sides in the real-life row between his ex-wife and his girlfriend.
As portrayed in the film, the girlfriend is both a homewrecker and a bit of a flake. Not only does she fail to visit her boyfriend in hospital: unwilling to witness the effects of the stroke that has left him unable to move or communicate, except through the blinking of an eyelid. But even the flashbacks to their relationship do not flatter her with anything other than physical beauty.
In one blackly comic sequence, Jean-Do recalls planning a "dirty weekend" with her: in, of all places, Lourdes. The plan runs aground when she insists on buying a large statue of the Virgin Mary, complete with flashing halo, and keeps it lit all night in their hotel room. Not surprisingly, this has a depressing effect on her man's libido.
By contrast, his ex-wife - or the "mother of my children" as he corrects someone who uses the w-word - is portrayed as a real-life Madonna. Despite being spurned for another woman, she visits him constantly throughout the illness. And her loving but martyred demeanour makes us wonder if his terrible condition was not the result of divine vengeance.
In the film's climactic scene, she is the only person on hand to take the phone-call when her Nemesis finally rings the hospital. And as the mother of his children repeatedly recites the alphabet, allowing Jean-Do to blink his responses, she is forced to relay his undying love to her rival, down the telephone. A gut-wrenching scene, it takes almost as much out of us as it does her.
The annoying thing is, apparently, it never happened. In real life, the girlfriend was the constant visitor, up to the point where Jean-Do died in her arms. The mother of his children came once a week, and was abroad with the new man in her life when the end came.
But in contrasting ways, both women conspired in the film's fictionalised account. In real life, Jean-Do's girlfriend - a journalist, like him - guards her privacy to the extent of not wanting the press to refer to her by name. It was not she who voiced objections to the film; it was her friends. By contrast, Jean-Do's ex-partner worked closely with the film-makers and exerted an influence over how the family's story was presented: an influence to which, as the mother of his children, French law entitles her.
The phrase "what you don't know won't hurt you" is particularly true of cinema audiences. Every film based on real events takes liberties with the truth: which, unvarnished, may not be particularly cinematic. Preciousness with facts can be the death of drama, and only those most closely involved in a story will demand it. The rest of us usually don't notice when facts are altered.
Most people who saw the film Michael Collinswould not have been upset - except in the way the director intended - at Ned Broy's murder by the British, in revenge for Bloody Sunday. Only if you knew that the real-life Broy survived the War of Independence, became Garda commissioner in the new Free State, and lived to a peaceful old age would you quibble with his fate at the hands of the dastardly Brits.
Anyway, perhaps neither the girlfriend nor the mother of his children are the real heroes of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Perhaps the real heroes are the speech therapist who taught him to use the alphabetical blinking system and the transcriber who patiently recorded the dictation for the book, in which every word took minutes to compose.
Then again, apparently, another powerful scene - in which the speech therapist emotionally berates her patient for saying he wants to die - did not really happen either. Oh dear, it's all very confusing. I'm sorry I delved into the real-life story at all. But if you haven't seen the film yet, trust me, you should: and you'll enjoy it all the more if you haven't read this column.