Rust and Bone

Marion Cotillard and Matthias Shoenaerts both deliver amazing and raw performances that get into your head. Upon first viewing, I wasn't sure what to expect and couldn't put into words how it left me. For days after it was all I could think about! It stuck with me and I realized that is what it's meant to do. The directing is superb. Jaques Audiard guides the story in a true to life way that does not allow it to become some frivolous love story meant to entertain, but a beautifully pieced together study of human triumph through adversity. The characters are flawed but you understand them, and together they provide the acceptance and support the other didn't even know they needed, which becomes the heart of the story. Don't watch this wanting Hollywood entertainment and romance because you won't get it. It is raw and sometimes hard to watch, but is also beautifully subtle and real. I already knew Marion Cotillard was an amazing actor but she solidified that for me in this role. It also introduced me to Matthias Schoenaerts, who is now one of my favorite actors. They are undeniable!

Only a highly-skilled director-auteur could have told this emotionally-charged story in an entertaining fashion.

And that's what director Jacques Audiard did with Rust and Bone, starring one of France's most popular actress Marion Cotillard.

This story starts out when Stephanie, played by Cotillard, is working at a sea world show by feeding the Orca, killer whales. Out of the clear blue, all hell breaks loose. The platform she is standing on to feed the Orca collapses and she is crippled for life. At the hospital, she is given two prosthetic limbs to walk. Her life changes.

Along comes Ali, played by Matthias Schoenaerts, who she had met at a nightclub when she had two strong legs and loved dancing. Having given him her phone number, he finally calls her. They met. He had seen her accident on the news, so he isn't completely surprised by her artificial legs. He also had his own problems. He had left his girlfriend, and took his five-year-old son Sam, played by Armand Verdure, to move in with his sister, Anna, played by Corinne Masiero, in Antibes, in the south of France.

The thing is, however, Ali, has trouble finding a steady job. He no longer works as a security bouncer at the nightclub where he met Stephanie. Now he works as a part-time installer of surveillance cameras. Having to take care of his son, and maintaining a relationship with Stephanie has placed undue burdens on Ali. To make some more money to help his sister and his son, he takes on kickboxing matches for the money. He gets hurt, but at least, the kickboxing gig pays the bills.

This story, however, focuses more on Stephanie's legs than it does on Ali's financial woes. As a loving boyfriend, he takes her to the beach where she enjoys swimming. To get her to the water, he has to carry her. Once in the water, Stephanie feels at home again, and swims, swims, and swims. As Ali looks at her go, swimming without legs.

Kudos goes to the director of this excellent movie, Audiard. To put together a movie of such a story can't be easy. But he did it. The movie works. Plus it's entertaining, despite of the misery, shattered dreams, and the impoverished down and out players. Audiard paces the movie brilliantly. He tells the story through his own interpretation. It's the movie director as auteur in the same vein as Francois Truffaut, Jean Renoir, and Luis Brunel.

And just when one thinks things could get worse for the characters. Things get worse. Ali's sister is caught by the surveillance cameras, installed by Ali, stealing expired food. As a result, she gets fired. Upset she blames her brother, who moves up north to Strabourg where his son ends up in the hospital after a tragic accident on the ice.

This emotionally charged story, Rust and Bone, comes at the viewer at different angles. Yet it's an entertaining movie, one of the reasons is the brilliant acting by Cotillard, and her co-star Matthias Schoenaerts. Sure, director Jacques Audiard deserves credit for telling such a sad story in a watchable entertaining fashion. Yet one of the secrets of his accomplishment to make quite a brilliant movie was the actress and actor he used to tell about the down and out misfortunate survivalists in an unpredictable, unsteady, topsy-turvy world. This movie is a brutal, hard-core squeeze on one's idea of humanity and the struggle of daily living. Clearly opposite of the feel good comedies. Rust and Bone is more about feel good I'm a human and I care. As far as the language, this movie is entirely in French. Yet it's simply enough for an intermediate French student to understand.

Yet Audiard lets the images, not words, tell the story. And he does so masterfully like a genuine cinema auteur.

An always interesting, sometimes absorbing, film. Cotillard's acting is (characteristically) superb, and her emotional connection with the audience contrasts brilliantly with the alienation that various scenes call for. One would think that the matching of these two characters would lack credibility, but both Cotillard and Schoenaerts are both fascinating and convincing. As an American who tires of the overly polished and predictable work of Hollywood blockbusters, I think this film will fill the need felt by "foreign film" aficionados.

Anchored by two masterclass performances, `Rust + Bone' is certainly one of the best films of 2012. I remember watching Audiard's 2009 Oscar nominee `A Prophet' and thinking that he had a brilliant career ahead of him, and seeing `Rust + Bone', which is arguably better, I think I made a good call there. With such depth of breadth, Audiard floats us from one scene to the next in a beautifully calculated and effervescent look at human weakness and desperation, all the more enriched by the beauty and the triumph of the human spirit. Equal parts gritty realism and heartfelt passions, `Rust + Bone' etches itself on our skin and creates a magnificent glimpse at the power of film today.

It moved me deeply.

The film follows the lives of two individuals who are confronted with adversity in one form or another and form a beautiful bond (that is fragmented and strained, but still beautiful) through the course of their newfound situation. Alain, a former kick boxer is suddenly left in charge of his five year old son and moves in with his sister in order to give him a stable home. He gets a few jobs here and there as a bouncer or a security guard (thanks to his girth) and then he meets the beautiful if not mysterious Stephanie, an Orca trainer at a sea life theme park who is in an unhappy relationship. After a horrific accident leaves Stephanie paralyzed, she seeks out Alain for support. His carefree approach to her plight (he doesn't coddle her or treat her different while still maintaining an air of kindness and respect for her) helps open Stephanie's eyes to the light at the end of her very dark tunnel. But before happiness can be achieved, pain and suffering have to erode progression, and as Alain falls into street fighting to make some extra money and feed his hunger for excitement, his role as a father becomes secondary and his relationship with Stephanie becomes strained as his self-centered habits start to take over.

With such rich direction, `Rust + Bone' is harmoniously crafted and packs a punch unlike any other film I've seen this year. It make me shake. I was shaking. It truly unearthed such honesty and such raw humanity that I'm in awe of the film, from start to finish. The film's bookends are fantastic, the development of character was some of the best (if not THE BEST) I've seen this year, and the way it tackled such melodramatic themes with authenticity as opposed to unbridled theatrics was a blessing. Visually beautiful, emotionally textured and all around unforgettable; this is how you make movies people!