Matthias Schoenaerts and Marion Cotillard (Roger Arpajou/Sony Pictures Classics)Ali (Bullhead’s Matthias Schoenaerts) is charged with taking care of a five-year old son he barely knows, and moves in with his sister and brother-in-law. Working as a club bouncer, he stops a brawl. Caught in the middle of the brawl is Stephanie (Marion Cotillard), whom we see (foreshadowing alert!) feet first, sprawled out on the floor. Jacques Audiard’s wildly melodramatic Rust and Bone begins in what seems to be a gritty milieu. But this is the south of France, and the volatile couple who don’t exactly meet cute accumulate so much incident in their fractured lives together that the tragic becomes ridiculous.
If you’ve read at all about the movie you probably know the early tragedy that befalls Stephanie, but to be fair, there’s spoilers from here on out. Cotillard has been rightly praised for a performance that for much of the film has her a double amputee. You see, Stephanie works with orcas at Antibes’ Marineworld, and this information is as quickly introduced as it becomes horrific. A workplace accident leaves Stephanie the helpless prey of one of her killer charges, though in a later scene that is just that side of maudlin, she forgives her attacker.
Ali is a lousy father drawn to bare knuckle boxing and casual sex, not at the same time of course. He hates the smell of dogs but is an animal himself, full of self-loathing. But despite his animal tendencies he has reserves of compassion, and after Stephanie’s accident he easily transitions to a caretaker role, albeit one that grows into caretaker-with-booty call.
If the plot synopsis already sounds a little overcooked, that’s not the half of it. Ali has a bad habit of turning his back on things, so that by the time he stops to pee in the snow, you can almost guess what’s going to happen when he’s not looking. Stephanie doesn’t come to grips with her injury so much as the injury becomes a kind of melodramatic circus attraction. It’s no coincidence that Ali is such an animal and Stephanie trains animals, and this isn’t the first time the film’s structure comes off as both messy and contrived.
Which figures. The movie is based on Craig Davision’s short story collection Rust and Bone, so if it sometimes comes across as a series of random violent incidents strung together, there’s a reason.
That this works at all is thanks to the tone Audiard sets, and his actors, who keep the movie watchable even as it’s going off the deep end. The movie is beautiful to look at, but at two hours packs too many events into one couple’s life. Like American movies with Telegraphed Important Moments, the French have their moments too, one of which has the wheelchair bound Stephanie dancing to the B-52’s “Love Shack,” (“As big as a whale,” get it?) Audiard has had better successes with A Prophet and Read my Lips, but Rust and Bone ends up running off the rails one or two times too often.
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Directed by Jacques Audiard.
Written by Jacques Audiard and Thomas Bidegain, based on stories by Craig Davidson.
With Marion Cotillard, Matthias Schoenaerts.
Running time 120 minutes
Rated R for strong sexual content, brief graphic nudity, some violence and language, and cuddly orcas who will take a chunk out of you as soon as look at you, Frenchie.
Opens today at E Street Landmark Cinema and Angelika Mosaic.
