Point Form Review: "Rust and Bone"

Rust and Bone (Jacques Audiard, 2012)

Most attention has been given to Marion Cotillard's magnificent performance, and for good reason: it's quite the feat of acting. But much has also been written about its meandering narrative, and usually in the negative -- which I must disagree with. Here are my quickly typed out notes immediately after the film, with some expansion.

-Chilly realism, beautifully shot: highlights include the movements of humans, water and whales in the bravura MarineLand sequence; sunlight dappling off of the reflective surface of water and through trees above; the multitude of shots of the body in action.

-Audiard is not so much interested in telling tightly scripted narratives as he is in a pseudo-realist mode of the quiet moments of everyday life interspersed with crunching violence; while it may seem stretched out for some audiences, those that are game will find beauty and depth. The film is unsentimentally understanding of its broken characters, and manages to find romance even as it avoids, and even shuns, romanticism.

-Audiard's cinema is a physical one, something we also experienced with the brutality of Un prophète. Here, we find a film preoccupied with physical exertion: blood, skin, sensation, sights and sounds, muscle and bones crunching, bloodied surfaces of snow, ice and glass, bubbling bloody spit, bloody water, broken skin from punches and thrown champagne glasses, a tooth falling to the ground. It is a film that attempts to capture the desire to feel, touch, dance and move: swimming, boxing, fucking. We simultaneously see the commodification of the body in contemporary France, as security cameras capture forbidden movements and actions of employees, whose menial jobs in chain stores are utterly without meaningful physical sensation or even exertion, or as with Stephanie's career as a marine animal trainer, the choreography of bodies (both animal and human) becomes a tacky spectacle set to Katy Perry. Ali, when he first meets Stephanie at the dance club the Annex, says that she dresses like a whore and doesn't quite understand her desire to simply go to the bar and dance. But Ali is generally indifferent to the gravity of his physicality: sex is the fleeting pleasure of one night stands, fighting a cheap way to spend excess energy and get quick money.



-I disliked the choices of music, but am unsure whether or not the selection of bland pop and boring, misty-eyed indie twee was a conscious decision or not.

-Matthias Schoenaerts' performance has been unfairly ignored, shadowed by the behemoth of Cotillard's international celebrity. His Ali is a complex mixture of goofy man-child sympathy and near-antagonistic imperfections, a bubbling concoction of masculine violence and attempts at fatherly responsibility. Audiard doesn't try to make his lead character likeable in any conventional sense, as Ali stumbles in his journey. Like most men, he makes mistakes, finds his temper flare and lets his immediate desires occasionally take over: but Cotillard's Stephanie isn't the magical saviour of grace and angelic perfection that most narratives would have her be, either. She struggles with depression and has her own flares of anger -- but nevertheless is a strong woman. Their chemistry is undeniable even as it's imperfect, and the scenes of Ali carrying Stephanie to and from the sea are some of the most beautiful and rousing images captured on camera in 2012.