Chris Knipp
11-29-2012, 05:38 PM
A reminder from my Paris May 2012 movie report. Rust and Bone has begun its US release by Sony Classics, and it is coming gradually to many US cities, so watch for it or check the Sony release calendar here. (http://www.sonyclassics.com/rustandbone/dates.html) Mike D'Angelo rated this in his top ten at Cannes (French critics rated it much higher) and his Tweet one-line review was: "The story of a horribly disabled person, and also of a woman with no legs. Stealthy reverse schematism! I like." He makes an essential point.
Jacques Audiard: RUST AND BONE (2012)
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/746/Az3AB0.jpg
MARION COTILLARD AND MATTHIAS SCHOENAERTS IN RUST AND BONE
An intense, testosterone-charged love story from Audiard
"Rust and Bone is an impressive film," Serge Kaganski, critic of the French weekly Les Inrockuptibles wrote (http://www.lesinrocks.com/cinema/films-a-l-affiche/de-rouille-et-dos/) this week in praise of Jacque Audiard's new title in Cannes competition and simultaneously opening in Paris, "a film of mastery, intensity and, finally, simplicity. . . Each shot is impeccably composed, lit, and cut," he went on, "while still serving the story and characters." This is an important point to make because there is no prettiness about most of the images: they rarely call attention to themselves. And Kaganski adds, "Because the largest share of success of the film lies in the characters, so all attention is on the actors: their bodies, their phrasing, their interactions, their looks, their range of feelings."
These are the key points: this is an actor's film, harsh, brilliant, hard to take. Rust and Bone is, as one would expect from Audiard, a remarkable, challenging movie. But it's different from the noirish stories he has done before, It's a love story, but it's also a kind of action movie, bursting with energy and hitting the viewer with a succession of physical and emotional shocks. Its hero is a brute of great physical intensity but terribly out of touch with his emotions. The arc leads him finally to acknowledge them. And so this is an action movie that is simultaneously (and less visibly much of the time) a slow-developing romance. It's loosely adapted from a similarly-titled short story collection by Canadian writer Craig Davidson, and we feel the expansion, pushing the limits of some story elements, so a few details seem fudged, the movie's most evidnet flaw. While packing a wallop and likely to please audiences looking for rough naturalistic elements combined with romance, this film isn't quite the wholehearted success Audiard achieved in his previous two films, the great frustrated-artist noir The Beat My Heart Skipped (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411270/reviews?start=0)and the breathlessly absorbing prison making-of-a-crime-boss epic A Prophet.
Simplly put, this is the relationship of a beautiful handicapped woman and a brutish fighter. Marineland orca-trainer Stéphanie (Marion Cotillard) is rendered legless by a terrible accident during a performance. While still whole, she is rescued from a fight in a bar by Ali (the up-and-coming Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts, whose breakthrough was the intense Flemish picture Bullhead (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3249-BULLHEAD-%28Michael-Roskam-2011%29&highlight=BULLHEAD)) . After her accident, before rehab and prosthetics, she calls up Ali and a relationship begins. Ali has come from the north to the south coast to Antibes with his 5-year-old son Sam (Armand Verdure) after his mother has involved the boy in drug smuggling. He is so brutish (and out of touch with emotion) that he seems either super-human or subhuman, and it's only Stéphanie's handicap that makes their union believable.
The relationship is just friendly at first, pals, then later fuck-budies. Ali takes Stéphanie swimming, carrying her into the water. This experience gives her a kind of physical release and revival from the depression of losing her legs. Later he suggests sex. That doesn't keep this testosterone brute from having sex with other women. Meanwhile he engages in the brutal illegal fights staged by his shady employer Martial (ace Belgian actor and filmmaker Bouli Lanners), also working for him in security at a business where Martial has installed illegal devices to spy on employees. This leads to the firing of Ali's hard-faced sister Louise (Céline Sallette), with whom he has been living since he came south. She has him thrown out of her house at gunpoint, with Sam.
There is another terrible accident, pointing to Ali's carelessness and violence, even to himself, but this ordeal finally leads him to acknowledge his feelings for those close to him, and a surprisingly soft ending, considering the extreme harshness of most of what has come before. The Variety (http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117947557?refcatid=31) reviewer at Cannes, Peter Debruge, links this film both with Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, and the tradition of French movies following the American genre of down-and-out lowlife fighters struggling vainly to get back up. He also suggests Audiard's blend of romance (and controlled script) and gritty almost Dardennes-style realism (and the Dardennes lend their imprimatur as producers here) is a canny choice because it satisfies audiences' lust for something new and fatigue with the flabby Nicholas Sparks kind of love story. However he points out this is a "massive undertaking" by French standards with its complex roles, allowing big star Cotillard dignity in a harsh role, introducing the remarkable Schoenaerts in a French-speaking part, not to mention the mixture of soothing music by Alexandre Desplat and American pop songs, gritty hand-held scenes and grand spectacles at Marineland (and underwater photography). All this is in addition to skillful F/X alteration of images to show Stéphanie's amputated limbs repeatedly in multiple situations to the point where we come to accept them. Audiard chose something smaller after the huge challenge of his big prison epic, yet it turns out not to be so small after all. Maybe he should have down-pedaled some of the plot elements. Though he based this on a whole story collection, the parts still seem fragmentary -- though the impact of every scene is so great, audiences won't notice. Best Actress Oscar winner Marion Cotillard has again been covered with honors for this performance. The film got the Best Picture award at the London Film Festival. One of a very small handful of the best US foreign film releases of the year. Highly recommended.
Rust and Bone (the original story title), French title De rouille et d'os, with a screenplay by Audiard and Thomas Bidegain, was shown at Cannes in competition and simultaneously released in Paris cinemas May 17, 2012. Screened for this review at Gaumont Opéra Paris May 17. Allociné press rating: 4.8 (but based on only 8 reviews -- when it went to 23, the score dropped to a still-high 4.3). Limited US release of the film by Sony Pictures Classics began Nov. 23, 2012 and fans out to other cities weekly for three or four weeks, not ending till early March. For the calendar go here. (http://www.sonyclassics.com/rustandbone/dates.html)
Jacques Audiard: RUST AND BONE (2012)
http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/640x480q90/746/Az3AB0.jpg
MARION COTILLARD AND MATTHIAS SCHOENAERTS IN RUST AND BONE
An intense, testosterone-charged love story from Audiard
"Rust and Bone is an impressive film," Serge Kaganski, critic of the French weekly Les Inrockuptibles wrote (http://www.lesinrocks.com/cinema/films-a-l-affiche/de-rouille-et-dos/) this week in praise of Jacque Audiard's new title in Cannes competition and simultaneously opening in Paris, "a film of mastery, intensity and, finally, simplicity. . . Each shot is impeccably composed, lit, and cut," he went on, "while still serving the story and characters." This is an important point to make because there is no prettiness about most of the images: they rarely call attention to themselves. And Kaganski adds, "Because the largest share of success of the film lies in the characters, so all attention is on the actors: their bodies, their phrasing, their interactions, their looks, their range of feelings."
These are the key points: this is an actor's film, harsh, brilliant, hard to take. Rust and Bone is, as one would expect from Audiard, a remarkable, challenging movie. But it's different from the noirish stories he has done before, It's a love story, but it's also a kind of action movie, bursting with energy and hitting the viewer with a succession of physical and emotional shocks. Its hero is a brute of great physical intensity but terribly out of touch with his emotions. The arc leads him finally to acknowledge them. And so this is an action movie that is simultaneously (and less visibly much of the time) a slow-developing romance. It's loosely adapted from a similarly-titled short story collection by Canadian writer Craig Davidson, and we feel the expansion, pushing the limits of some story elements, so a few details seem fudged, the movie's most evidnet flaw. While packing a wallop and likely to please audiences looking for rough naturalistic elements combined with romance, this film isn't quite the wholehearted success Audiard achieved in his previous two films, the great frustrated-artist noir The Beat My Heart Skipped (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411270/reviews?start=0)and the breathlessly absorbing prison making-of-a-crime-boss epic A Prophet.
Simplly put, this is the relationship of a beautiful handicapped woman and a brutish fighter. Marineland orca-trainer Stéphanie (Marion Cotillard) is rendered legless by a terrible accident during a performance. While still whole, she is rescued from a fight in a bar by Ali (the up-and-coming Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts, whose breakthrough was the intense Flemish picture Bullhead (http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?3249-BULLHEAD-%28Michael-Roskam-2011%29&highlight=BULLHEAD)) . After her accident, before rehab and prosthetics, she calls up Ali and a relationship begins. Ali has come from the north to the south coast to Antibes with his 5-year-old son Sam (Armand Verdure) after his mother has involved the boy in drug smuggling. He is so brutish (and out of touch with emotion) that he seems either super-human or subhuman, and it's only Stéphanie's handicap that makes their union believable.
The relationship is just friendly at first, pals, then later fuck-budies. Ali takes Stéphanie swimming, carrying her into the water. This experience gives her a kind of physical release and revival from the depression of losing her legs. Later he suggests sex. That doesn't keep this testosterone brute from having sex with other women. Meanwhile he engages in the brutal illegal fights staged by his shady employer Martial (ace Belgian actor and filmmaker Bouli Lanners), also working for him in security at a business where Martial has installed illegal devices to spy on employees. This leads to the firing of Ali's hard-faced sister Louise (Céline Sallette), with whom he has been living since he came south. She has him thrown out of her house at gunpoint, with Sam.
There is another terrible accident, pointing to Ali's carelessness and violence, even to himself, but this ordeal finally leads him to acknowledge his feelings for those close to him, and a surprisingly soft ending, considering the extreme harshness of most of what has come before. The Variety (http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117947557?refcatid=31) reviewer at Cannes, Peter Debruge, links this film both with Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler, and the tradition of French movies following the American genre of down-and-out lowlife fighters struggling vainly to get back up. He also suggests Audiard's blend of romance (and controlled script) and gritty almost Dardennes-style realism (and the Dardennes lend their imprimatur as producers here) is a canny choice because it satisfies audiences' lust for something new and fatigue with the flabby Nicholas Sparks kind of love story. However he points out this is a "massive undertaking" by French standards with its complex roles, allowing big star Cotillard dignity in a harsh role, introducing the remarkable Schoenaerts in a French-speaking part, not to mention the mixture of soothing music by Alexandre Desplat and American pop songs, gritty hand-held scenes and grand spectacles at Marineland (and underwater photography). All this is in addition to skillful F/X alteration of images to show Stéphanie's amputated limbs repeatedly in multiple situations to the point where we come to accept them. Audiard chose something smaller after the huge challenge of his big prison epic, yet it turns out not to be so small after all. Maybe he should have down-pedaled some of the plot elements. Though he based this on a whole story collection, the parts still seem fragmentary -- though the impact of every scene is so great, audiences won't notice. Best Actress Oscar winner Marion Cotillard has again been covered with honors for this performance. The film got the Best Picture award at the London Film Festival. One of a very small handful of the best US foreign film releases of the year. Highly recommended.
Rust and Bone (the original story title), French title De rouille et d'os, with a screenplay by Audiard and Thomas Bidegain, was shown at Cannes in competition and simultaneously released in Paris cinemas May 17, 2012. Screened for this review at Gaumont Opéra Paris May 17. Allociné press rating: 4.8 (but based on only 8 reviews -- when it went to 23, the score dropped to a still-high 4.3). Limited US release of the film by Sony Pictures Classics began Nov. 23, 2012 and fans out to other cities weekly for three or four weeks, not ending till early March. For the calendar go here. (http://www.sonyclassics.com/rustandbone/dates.html)