RUST AND BONE (De rouille et d'os) (2012)

Genre: Drama/Romance
Director: Jacques Audiard
Cast: Marion Cotillard, Matthias Schoenaerts, Armand Verdure, Céline Sallette, Corinne Masiero, Bouli Lanners, Jean-Michel Correia
RunTime: 2 hrs
Released By: Festive Films, Scorpio East Pictures and Cathay-Keris Films
Rating: M18 (Sexual Scenes And Nudity)
Official Website: http://www.sonyclassics.com/rustandbone/

Opening Day: 10 January 2013 

Synopsis: It all begins in the North of France. Ali suddenly finds himself with a five year-old child on his hands. Sam is his son, but he hardly knows him. Homeless, penniless and friendless, Ali takes refuge with his sister in Antibes. There things improve immediately. She puts them up in her garage, she takes the child under her wing and the weather is glorious. Ali first runs into Stephanie during a night club brawl. He drives her home and leaves her his phone number. He is poor, she is beautiful and self-assured. Stephanie trains killer whales at Marineland. When a performance ends in tragedy, a call in the night again brings them together. When Ali sees her next, his princess is confined to a wheel chair; she has lost her legs and quite a few illusions. He simply helps her, with no compassion or pity. And she comes alive again.

Movie Review:

Jacques Audiard’s followup to his galvanic prison yarn ‘A Prophet’ is a gritty but heartfelt story about the human condition in its rawest – broken, beaten but yet never defeated. As is convention for such stories, ‘Rust and Bone’ has two flawed people making an unusual connection with each other – on one hand, a homeless single dad of a five-year-old son who moonlights as a street fighter; and on the other, an orca trainer who loses both her legs in a horrific accident one day at work.

Inspired by Canadian writer Craig Davidson’s short story collection of the same name, Audiard works with co-writer and frequent collaborator Thomas Bidegain to establish a new set of characters led by Stephanie (Marion Cotillard) and Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) who play the aforementioned trainer and fighter respectively. Before they meet, Ali has just moved in with his son Sam (Armand Verdure) into his sister’s place in Antibes, whom he has not seen in the last five years.

Taking a job as a bouncer at a club, Ali meets Stephanie when he rescues her from a brawl she started but could not overcome. Despite her job entertaining people at an oceanarium, she is living an unhappy life with her overly controlling boyfriend, whom she defies by going clubbing simply to antagonise him. The similarities in their personalities are significant – both are equally strong-headed people frustrated with their existing circumstances – and given their independent nature, it is Stephanie who reaches out to Ali only after her accident.   

Even so, their initial connection is not what you would expect. Stephanie knows that there is little room for pity in Ali, and is looking for in him someone who would not constantly remind her of her predicament through his or her compassion. Indeed, Ali’s only visible reaction is one of shock, the time they spent together further showing his emotionless demeanour. Yet in his matter-of-fact way, Ali shows that he does care – not in words, but in action, as he brings her to the beach, carries her into the sea and lets her regain a sense of empowerment through swimming out in the open by herself.

But it isn’t all about Stephanie – as she struggles to make a physical healing, Ali is ironically testing the limits of his physicality by participating in brutal street fights arranged by a shady promoter (Bouli Lanners). The way Stephanie looks with utter bewildering concern as Ali gets bruised and bloodied shows that there is indeed more to their relationship, which goes one step further when Ali proposes sex. At first, it seems no more than a mutually consenting act of pleasure, but Stephanie realises it has become much more one night when they visit the same club Ali used to be bouncer and the latter takes off with some other hot girl.

As Stephanie is made to confront her feelings for Ali, so too is Ali forced to come to terms with his own growing infatuation for her. Theirs is a relationship that defies easy convention, and just as Stephanie and Ali continue to discover and define the limits of their relationship, so too are we forced to grapple with these boundaries. Does it get melodramatic? Sure, the very premise of the story already spells that, but this is not the sappy kind we are used to; rather, it is a tale told with rough unsentimental compassion, as Audiard makes his audience accept these characters as they are – neither good nor bad, just two protagonists trying to figure their way through life with a little help from each other.

Speaking of which, Audiard gets more than a little help from excellent performances by both French actress Cotillard and Belgian actor Schoenaerts. Like her breakout performance in ‘La Vie En Rose’, Cotillard again abandons all sign of glamour and throws herself completely into the tough challenging role of Stephanie. Though it would not take much for us to empathise with her character, Cotillard eschews such conveniences in favour of a brutally honest and unpretentiously down-to-earth portrayal that fully conveys her character’s distress at first and grit and determination thereafter.

Schoenaerts is her perfect foil, their interplay of tough and tender complementing each other beautifully. As an essentially two-character drama, Audiard has to rely heavily on the chemistry between Cotillard and Schoenaerts, and both actors prove to be well-matched for each other. In turn, Audiard builds some powerful scenes around them – particularly one where Schoenaerts is almost beaten by a much stronger opponent until Cotillard steps out of the vehicle she has been anxiously watching the match from and gives him renewed strength just by the very sight of her two mechanical legs.

Because of the atypical nature of their relationship, we never quite know how they will end up, especially since Stephanie and Ali are themselves figuring out just how far and intense they are comfortable on emotional levels – and every connection they make with each other is compelling for that very reason. Yet in their raw unsentimentality, we witness the power of the human connection as two individuals learn to draw strength and inspiration from each other to overcome their bitter circumstances.

Significant too is the soundtrack of the movie, which mixes Alexandre Desplat’s sparse score with American top-40 tunes from the 80s and 90s. The combination is daring to say the least, but one soon realises that it is carefully chosen to enhance the emotional beats of the movie. As sobering as it is uplifting, this is one edgy and emotional movie which forgoes Hollywood storytelling conventions to tell a gritty yet intimate human drama which feels almost documentary-like in its realness and rawness. And as a sign of just how potent it is, we guarantee you that you won’t feel the same listening to Katy Perry’s ‘Firework’ afterwards. 

Movie Rating:

(Raw, edgy and gritty, this is an unparalleled romantic drama that thrives on daring and beautifully accomplished performances from its lead stars)

Review by Gabriel Chong