Last summer, I went to the Telluride Film Festival on a student program, where I was barraged with films from various genres and countries. Although I saw many that I liked, the only one I came home raving about was "Rust and Bone" (2012). The film's tremendous passion and beauty made it one of the best foreign films I've ever seen.
Based on a short story by Canadian author Craig Davidson, "Rust and Bone" has a plot that looks like it was setup by the manatees from "South Park." Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) is a single father who moves in with his sister while looking for a steady job. While working as a bouncer for a nightclub, he meets Stephanie (Marion Cotillard), a gorgeous whale trainer who loses her legs in an accident with her beloved orcas. At her lowest point, Stephanie reaches out to Ali and they find themselves changing each other's lives.
"Rust and Bone" represents a significant departure for director Jacques Audiard, the man behind crime dramas like "The Beat That My Heart Skipped" (2005) and the internationally acclaimed "A Prophet" (2009), but it's a turn for the better. There was something empty and nihilistic about his previous films that "Rust and Bone" seems to reverse. Ali and Stephanie's relationship is beautiful and passionate, but not without the ups and downs that a normal couple would have.
If this is your first Audiard film, you should know that he is the undisputed master of picking the right music to accompany his dizzying montages. Songs as diverse as Bon Iver's "The Wolves" and the B-52's "Love Shack" perfectly accentuate his images. He even manages to reclaim the triumphant feel-good message of Katy Perry's "Firework" after every top 40 radio station in America sucked it out by playing it ad nauseum. Months after seeing "Rust and Bone," I'm still looking for the song that plays during Ali's street fighting montage.
Yet, a story as crazy as that of "Rust and Bone" could not work without the right actors, and Schoenaerts and Cotillard are perfect in their roles. I'm grateful to the film for introducing me to Schoenaerts, a Belgian actor who embodies the imperfect Ali with a paradoxically out-of-control finesse. Single father Ali is no Dustin Hoffman in "Kramer vs. Kramer" (1979). In fact, he may be his antithesis a slightly abusive womanizer who wants to do good but too often ends up messing up. It's always refreshing to see characters who aren't just black and white, and Ali is one of them.
Of particular note is Cotillard. We already knew she was a fantastic actress, but this is her first major French film since "La Vie en Rose" (2007), and this role is streets ahead of mere imitation. If you've ever wanted to know what it's like to have your legs amputated, you might as well let Cotillard show you. I'm surprised she didn't have her legs cut off for the role (which also merits a special shout-out to the visual effects department), but she manages to portray the plight of not a cripple, but a woman who's had her entire life ripped from her.
This is a welcome departure from her usual roles as an alluring woman of foreign descent. Even in her most ethnically neutral roles like "Inception" (2010), there's a hint that she's an outsider. But with French films like "Rust and Bone," Cotillard is able to do what her Hollywood characters constrain her from doing: act without pretension.
While I hope Schoenaerts will hit it big as well, I feel like he would be subject to the same constraining roles if he made the jump to Hollywood. One only needs to look at Jean Dujardin, who won the best actor prize at last year's Academy Awards and next appears in Martin Scorsese's "The Wolf of Wall Street" (2013), in which he'll play a French investment banker.
"Rust and Bone" played on Friday at Loew Auditorium.
