Marion Cotillard in RUST AND BONE (Sony Pictures Classics)

Directed by Jacques Audiard
Written by Audiard & Thomas Bidegain, based on the short-story collection Rust and Bone by Craig Davidson
Released by Sony Pictures Classics
French with English subtitles.
France. 120 min. Rated R
With Marion Cotillard, Matthias Schoenaerts, Armand Verdure, Céline Sallette, Corinne Masiero, Bouli Lanners & Jean-Michel Correia

On first sight, the eccentric and melodramatic premise of Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone is a hard sell. However, his follow up to A Prophet is gathering significant nominations, including the Palme d’Or, and awards, winning best film at the London Film Festival last month.

Audiard’s second writing collaboration with Thomas Bidegain (who co-wrote A Prophet) is an inventive adaptation that combines stories and redraws characters from Canadian writer Craig Davidson’s collection of shorts of the same name. Transplanting the location to the South of France, the script weaves complex studies of marginalized character with subtle and moving observations that invest humanity in brutal and brutalized individuals.

The film follows penniless Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts), who travels from Belgium with his five-year-old son, Sam (Armand Verdure), to live with his distant sister and start afresh on the Cote D’Azur. Ali struggles to provide for Sam, whose custody has recently been forced on him by his ex’s prison sentence. On the train ride south, he scavenges through trash for leftover food.

A former amateur boxer, Ali secures a job as a bouncer at a popular Riviera club, and there first encounters Stephanie (Marion Cotillard). He rescues her after a fight erupts when she rejects an aggressive admirer. While driving her home, Ali bluntly tells her that if she “dresses like a whore” she invites such attention. After dropping her off, he gives the bemused Stephanie his number, in front of her angry boyfriend.

Stephanie works as an orca trainer at an aquatic amusement park. While performing as one of the ringmasters with the whales, a horrific accident causes Stephanie to lose her lower legs, after which she retreats into a self-imposed isolation. Frustrated by pitying reactions, Stephanie calls Ali out of the blue. Open for anything, he takes her up on her offer to meet. At first, he’s shocked but brutally pragmatic about Stephanie’s situation, and coerces her to leave her apartment. He reintroduces her to simple pleasures: the beach, the sun on her face, and the freedom of swimming.

They develop a candid relationship. After having vested so much of her identity in her sexuality, Stephanie can’t imagine feeling attractive again. Always up for casual sex, Ali offers to see if she is still capable. Initially refusing, she relents, and they begin a sexual relationship with Ali happy to perform whenever she telephones and requests if he’s “operational.”

Directionless, ducking and diving to eke out a living to support Sam, Ali engages in illegal surveillance work with a shady colleague, who also persuades him to fight bare-knuckle bouts. Ali ignores the risks, becoming a worthy contender for the bloodthirsty baying crowd with Stephanie’s tentative support. Recognizing and accepting each other’s pain, their relationship evolves beyond the currency of the body that they’ve both traded on in the past. Stephanie begins to fall in love with Ali, while her courage to overcome her condition provides Ali’s inspiration to win each fight.

Schoenaerts effortlessly embodies masculinity in all its complexity—violent but capable of great tenderness and consideration. Marion Cotillard also gives an extraordinary performance, strong and subtle. From the moment of Stephanie’s agonizing realization that she’s an amputee, her condition is seamlessly re-created with visual effects and shown so often that the curiosity fades.

Capturing the sun drenched Cote D’Azur, Stéphane Fontaine’s expressive cinematography contrasts hand-held, raw verité with lyrical compositions, like an orca’s gracefully emergence from the cyan depths to court Stephanie’s touch through the tank’s glass.

Audiard continues his tradition of exploring the complexity of unconventional heroes. With assured direction he blends dark humor, tragedy, violence, and suspense with taboo-busting sex scenes. Despite some plot contrivances, Rust and Bone is a stunning visual achievement and an eccentric and enthralling love story that should put its leads in the running for many awards.