Zack Mosley [Film Festival 10.01.12] drama



Here's a story that sounds mawkish on paper:

Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) is a vulnerable brawler who has recently taken custody of his five-year old son Max. A fleeting reference is made to some criminally irresponsible mother who was using the boy as a drug mule, but Ali does not seem like the type to dwell on misfortune. Father and son catch a ride to Antibes, where they impose themselves upon Ali's sister and her modest homestead. Ali quickly finds work as a bouncer at a nightclub, thanks to his intimidating physicality. Part of his job description involves beating the crap out of assholes, so it isn't long before he meets Stéphanie (Marion Cotillard), a beautiful (I mentioned it was Marion Cotillard, right?) Orca trainer who attracts the type of assholes that tend to need the crap beaten out of them. Ali drives Stephanie home after a bloody incident on the dance floor, and leaves his phone number despite her irritated stay-at-home boyfriend. It isn't until an Orca bites Stéphanie's legs off that she actually gives him a call.


OK, so it's actually not clear whether the Orca bites the legs off, or whether they were just crushed and subsequently amputated at the knee. Point is, a lovely pair of gams ends up on the cutting room floor.

I know what you're thinking. All the ingredients for melodrama are present and accounted for here, and I didn't even mention the third act gut punch. However, Rust and Bone is a Jacques Audiard film. The French writer/director is best known for his towering crime epic A Prophet, as he should be. But prior to that film he was quietly establishing himself with restrained character pieces, like Read My Lips and The Beat My Heart Skipped. He plays emotional power chords on acoustic. It's no coincidence that he cranks up the Bon Iver on the soundtrack a couple of times.

If melodrama involves stereotypical characters with exaggerated emotions, then Audiard is attempting the opposite of that. His characters are nuanced and real, flawed in some ways but graceful in others. They go through rough shit, but with strength and stoicism. You will not find any whiners in a Jacques Audiard film. Instead you will find emotionally/physically/spiritually wounded human beings, living gritty hardscrabble lives, attempting to connect across the gulf of their common humanity, and ultimately finding strength in each other. It is no accident that an Orca, a wild animal made to perform in captivity, is the central visual metaphor of Rust and Bone.

Both Schoenaerts and Cotillard are dazzling in their respective roles, digging into the deep emotive reserves required by the script and then keeping it all under the surface. Cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine somehow finds a way to make a non-stop series of beauty shots look raw and organic. Editor Juliette Welfling sucks you into this world within moments, arranging Fontaine's visuals into a structure with the rhythms of poetry. The script (adapted from short stories by Craig Davidson by Audiard and Thomas Bidegain) layers in social realist themes in discreet, non-preachy ways. All of these factors conceal the dramatic strings being pulled. It all plays because it all feels incredibly honest and true to life.
Jacques Audiard has perfected his naturalistic approach to the extent that he can get away with basically anything. He is one of the foremost visual storytellers working in film today. I will watch any film he has anything to do with, from now until infinity.

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