It has been Oscar nominated as the Spanish entry for Best Foreign Film, 2005. It has been garlanded with a vast array of Spanish Goyas and has reportedly provoked the annoyance of Pedro Almodovar, who felt his latest offering, Bad Education, is a better film.

Alejandro Amenabar was at the helm of a memorable predecessor, The Others, starring Nicole Kidman. In The Sea Inside, you find yourself back in the territory of Whose Life Is It Anyway? with a debate about whether euthanasia and assisted suicides should be practiced in cases where people are medically unable to overcome particularly restrictive personal defects.

Based on a true story, the excellent Javier Bardem plays Ramon Sampedro, a quadriplegic who is paralysed from the neck down. Naturally frustrated, his condition unlikely to improve, he wants to win, through the courts if necessary, the right to die with dignity. When he meets Julia (Belen Rueda), a lawyer, who is herself partly disabled, a love springs up between them, as each enjoys the other's company. Julia helps him write his memoirs and Ramon thinks she will assist him in his bid to end his life.

Another woman (Lola Duenas) befriends Ramon, too, and she falls deeply in love with him also. As the hours and days roll by, his struggle with the courts becomes the subject of a bitter dispute within his family, while Ramon becomes more determined in his endevour.

The Sea Inside is well thought out, but slightly laboured. It suggests Ramon is right to seek suicide and Julia wrong to want to carry on. Whose Life Is It Anyway? says the same things in a more succinct manner, whilst the other recent movie on the subject, The Barbarian Invasions, faced up to the euthanasia debate with memorable banter between family and friends.

The Sea Inside isn't a bad film, but some who are disabled may feel it suggests too easily that in the worst circumstances there is only one solution, when in fact there is more than one.