Rust and Bone | Little White Lies

Rust and Bone

01 Nov 2012 / Released: 02 Nov 2012

A woman with long dark hair stands on a rooftop, arms raised, against a blue sky background.
A woman with long dark hair stands on a rooftop, arms raised, against a blue sky background.
4

Anticipation.

It’s Audiard and therefore a must-see, no matter how dodgy-sounding the premise.

4

Enjoyment.

Tense, moving, relevant, bold: a truly gripping film.

4

In Retrospect.

Apart from the soppy soundtrack, it’s very affecting and potent stuff.

Jacques Audi­ard shows us his lit­tle-seen fem­i­nine side in this eccen­tric, high-styled emo romance.

As French direc­tor Jacques Audi­ard admit­ted in a 2009 inter­view with The Guardian, every time he gets behind the cam­era, he visu­alis­es the final scene from John Huston’s late-career hit Fat City from 1972. Specif­i­cal­ly, the lacon­ic dénoue­ment in which two beat­en-down box­ers played by Sta­cy Keach and a young Jeff Bridges sit and drink a cup of cof­fee in a murky din­er in Stock­ton, Cal­i­for­nia. They realise – with a qui­et accep­tance – that they are fail­ures and that their lives will always make a bee­line for the drain”.

With Rust and Bone, Audi­ard again draws on the essence of this scene, this time bring­ing in a strong female lead who must rene­go­ti­ate her rela­tion­ship with the out­side world after los­ing both her legs. Stéphanie (Mar­i­on Cotil­lard), an orca train­er, is injured dur­ing an acci­dent at the aquat­ic theme park where she works. Dur­ing her pro­longed peri­od of con­va­les­cence she falls in love with a nomadic bare-knuck­le fight­er named Ali (Matthias Schoe­naerts). He has just arrived in town, kid in tow, from a clear­ly frag­ment­ed and trou­bled life elsewhere.

The bull­ish Schoe­naerts presents Ali as a volatile yet ulti­mate­ly lov­ing out­sider. The moments of ten­der­ness he shares with his son fre­quent­ly tip over into uncom­fort­able machis­mo, while inti­mate scenes with Stéphanie are tan­ta­lis­ing­ly cloud­ed by his appar­ent emo­tion­al indif­fer­ence. He is a clas­sic Audi­ard male. From the syn­op­sis alone, the out­look isn’t promis­ing: the whale smacks of over­stuffed metaphor, while the jux­ta­po­si­tion between the raw ani­mal­ism of the beast and the naked bru­tal­i­ty of the male fight­ers is a mite on-the-nose.

And yet Audi­ard has in fact cre­at­ed a film that skil­ful­ly and ten­der­ly bal­ances these forces. Stéphanie expe­ri­ences surges of anx­i­ety pro­pelled by the untame­able nature of both the ani­mal and the man she loves. This bit­ter­sweet sense of fail­ure looms heavy over almost every scene, and sud­den excess­es of emo­tion threat­en every exchange.

The hor­ror of Stéphanie’s acci­dent is exe­cut­ed with great style, set to the oppres­sive, deep-pump­ing bass of Real 2 Reel’s I Like 2 Move It’. Like the fi lm as a whole, the scene is frag­men­tary and hazy. But Audi­ard is bru­tal when it comes to depict­ing the short­com­ings of the human body: he zeroes in on the snot and blood of the street fight­ers, who bat­ter each oth­er in out-of-town park­ing lots. The sex scenes, too, are deeply erot­ic, pre­cise­ly because of their mat­ter-of-fact por­tray­al. The bod­ies and minds are dam­aged, but are in the process of being reclaimed and rebuilt.

Audi­ard plays on well-worn themes – the threat of vio­lence, the abuse of pow­er, men strug­gling to accept respon­si­bil­i­ty for their actions. But he also treads orig­i­nal ground in his explo­ration of Stéphanie’s bur­geon­ing sense of wom­an­hood as altered by her acci­dent. When Ali per­suades Stéphanie to go swim­ming in the sea, the first time she has stepped out­side of her stink­ing flat in months, it’s a moment of incred­i­ble sex­u­al ener­gy that has noth­ing to do with Ali’s male presence.

Instead, Audiard’s cam­era devotes itself to Stephanie’s new­found sen­su­al­i­ty. She swims naked, leg­less in full view, joy­ous­ly redis­cov­er­ing each nerve in her body, real­is­ing that life might not be worth­less. Cotillard’s per­for­mance is elec­tri­fy­ing. Redo­lent of John Hus­ton, Audi­ard locates a kind of poet­ry in dam­age. He finds a bruised beau­ty in failure.

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