Co-written by Audiard and Thomas Bidegain, and adapted from a collection of short stories by the American author Craig Davidson, Jacques Audiard's genuinely moving Rust and Bone is the story of two wounded people who form a bond based on recognition and acceptance of the others pain. Supported a lovely score by Alexandre Desplat, the film is marked by astonishing performances by Oscar winner Marion Cotillard as Stephanie, a young whale trainer struggling to recover from a horrendous accident, and Matthias Schoenaerts as Ali, a brutish ex-boxer who is unable to acknowledge or express his feelings.
Rust and Bone is not a film that is easy to describe. It is raw and visceral – a punch in the gut, yet it is also a film of intelligence and sensitivity, certainly an art film but one that is also geared to a larger audience, to anyone who has suffered pain and loneliness. When we first meet Ali, he is a man with dreams of making it big in kickboxing, but who is now at his lowest point. Unemployed, he has just left Belgium with his five-year-old son Sam (Armand Verdure) to live with his sister Anna (Corinne Masiero) and her husband in Antibes, a French resort town on the Mediterranean. As Audiard describes him, "he's nothing, he's a bum, he's nobody. He looks just like the people lining up at soup kitchens."
Though Ali appears to have a good relationship wit Sam, he relates to him more like an older sibling than a responsible father, as someone able to provide unconditional love. That the film allows us to see Ali as both a man of ferocious energy and innate sensitivity, a three-dimensional human being who elicits our empathy, is a major accomplishment. Stephanie, who works as trainer of Orcas at a local marine park, is rescued by Ali from an overaggressive pursuer in the club where he is a bouncer and the two begin a tentative relationship. In a moment of honesty, Stephanie tells him that her greatest pleasure in a relationship is to be observed, "I like being watched," she says. "I like turning guys on, Get them all worked up, but then I get bored."
The nature of their relationship, however, changes forever when Stephanie is seriously injured in an accident at the pool, losing both of her legs and, with them, her reason to live. The scene when Stephanie wakes up in the hospital to discover that her legs have been amputated is one of the most gut-wrenching I've seen. After a period of recovery, Stephanie, now fitted with artificial legs, reaches out to Ali for companionship and finds him open and receptive but brutally honest. For her, he is the only person she can trust to listen to her without judgment even though, in his brutal frankness, he tells her that she is "dressed like a whore," and casually suggests that they sleep together just to see if "she can still do it."
Despite showing concern for her needs, Ali has moments of cruel insensitivity when he picks up a girl for a one-night stand even when Stephanie is with him, prompting her to ask him, "Am I a friend, a pal, a buddy like the others? If we continue, we have to do it right. I mean consideration." Ali is determined to become a professional fighter and becomes engaged in illegal activities such as street fighting and doing surveillance work for his sleazy friend Martial (Bouli Lanners), an activity that damages his relationship with Anna and forces Stephanie to be a spectator from the sidelines. Although the film is raw, there are some moments of exquisite lyricism as captured by cinematographer Stephane Fontaine, in particular, the scene where Stephanie interacts with a killer whale through a glass partition in an underwater tank.
Despite the fact that there are some contrivances and melodrama in the plot that do not mesh with the film's gritty naturalism, Rust and Bone is a stunning achievement. As Eli moves to a new level of growth, not only with Stephanie but also with Anna and Sam, a haunting picture emerges of two people whose inner strength allows a crisis in their life to turn into a spiritual awakening, an opportunity to experience a new sense of being alive. As the Greek tragedian Aeschylus expressed it, "Pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."
Rust and Bone is not a film that is easy to describe. It is raw and visceral – a punch in the gut, yet it is also a film of intelligence and sensitivity, certainly an art film but one that is also geared to a larger audience, to anyone who has suffered pain and loneliness. When we first meet Ali, he is a man with dreams of making it big in kickboxing, but who is now at his lowest point. Unemployed, he has just left Belgium with his five-year-old son Sam (Armand Verdure) to live with his sister Anna (Corinne Masiero) and her husband in Antibes, a French resort town on the Mediterranean. As Audiard describes him, "he's nothing, he's a bum, he's nobody. He looks just like the people lining up at soup kitchens."
Though Ali appears to have a good relationship wit Sam, he relates to him more like an older sibling than a responsible father, as someone able to provide unconditional love. That the film allows us to see Ali as both a man of ferocious energy and innate sensitivity, a three-dimensional human being who elicits our empathy, is a major accomplishment. Stephanie, who works as trainer of Orcas at a local marine park, is rescued by Ali from an overaggressive pursuer in the club where he is a bouncer and the two begin a tentative relationship. In a moment of honesty, Stephanie tells him that her greatest pleasure in a relationship is to be observed, "I like being watched," she says. "I like turning guys on, Get them all worked up, but then I get bored."
The nature of their relationship, however, changes forever when Stephanie is seriously injured in an accident at the pool, losing both of her legs and, with them, her reason to live. The scene when Stephanie wakes up in the hospital to discover that her legs have been amputated is one of the most gut-wrenching I've seen. After a period of recovery, Stephanie, now fitted with artificial legs, reaches out to Ali for companionship and finds him open and receptive but brutally honest. For her, he is the only person she can trust to listen to her without judgment even though, in his brutal frankness, he tells her that she is "dressed like a whore," and casually suggests that they sleep together just to see if "she can still do it."
Despite showing concern for her needs, Ali has moments of cruel insensitivity when he picks up a girl for a one-night stand even when Stephanie is with him, prompting her to ask him, "Am I a friend, a pal, a buddy like the others? If we continue, we have to do it right. I mean consideration." Ali is determined to become a professional fighter and becomes engaged in illegal activities such as street fighting and doing surveillance work for his sleazy friend Martial (Bouli Lanners), an activity that damages his relationship with Anna and forces Stephanie to be a spectator from the sidelines. Although the film is raw, there are some moments of exquisite lyricism as captured by cinematographer Stephane Fontaine, in particular, the scene where Stephanie interacts with a killer whale through a glass partition in an underwater tank.
Despite the fact that there are some contrivances and melodrama in the plot that do not mesh with the film's gritty naturalism, Rust and Bone is a stunning achievement. As Eli moves to a new level of growth, not only with Stephanie but also with Anna and Sam, a haunting picture emerges of two people whose inner strength allows a crisis in their life to turn into a spiritual awakening, an opportunity to experience a new sense of being alive. As the Greek tragedian Aeschylus expressed it, "Pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."