MY Left Foot, Whose Life Is It Anyway? and last year's Inside I'm Dancing have all shone a light on disability. The Sea Inside adds euthanasia to the mix, and has Spanish cinema's golden star, Javier Bardem, fighting its case.

Bardem, 35 and normally muscular in the manner of a Robert De Niro, is near unrecognisable as Ramon Sampredo, a 55-year-old quadriplegic, bedridden and sunken in body since a swimming accident left him paralysed from the neck down at the age of 26.

Based on a true story, Sampredo's tale is one of taking on church and state and his farming family in his wish to be allowed to die with dignity. He lives with his grumpy brother, kind-hearted sister-in-law and nephew on their simple, crumbling farm, and his only escape from his room is in music and books and his dreams of walks along the beach. Above all, his escape is in the writing of his memoirs, Letters From Hell, typed with a stick in his mouth on his computer.

The body is weak, the mind is made up, but there is poetry to his soul, a gift for expression and insight that attracts his lawyer Julia (Belen Rueda). A supporter of euthanasia, she has her own ailment, a wasting disease that will shorten her life, and the more time she spends away from her husband with Ramon, the more she bonds with him.

Single mother and radio presenter Rosa (Lola Duenas) is struck by him too. She takes it upon herself to brighten his day after seeing Ramon appearing on television when forlornly fighting his case through the courts, which refuse to grant him the right to assisted suicide. In reality, it is she who craves his spirit, such is her loneliness, and her reasons for wanting him to stay alive are selfish.

Ramon is not for turning. He is weary of being unable to move, tired too of being a family burden, and yet his disposition is naturally sunny. He is amusing company, and he can still twinkle, winning the hearts of women.

In an American remake he would all too probably be played by Robin Williams, and there is an American-style slickness to Alejandro Amenabar's manipulative direction and a simplicity to the screenplay that undermines the film's wish for intelligence.

Its impact is primarily emotional, in every way due to Bardem's extraordinary performance, so moving when unable to move.

Updated: 10:39 Friday, February 18, 2005