De rouille et d'os (2012) Reviews

• Superior craftsmanship on all levels

  rubenm2012-06-04

  Jacques Audiard is the maker of the sensational, Oscar-nominated movie Un Prophète. Matthias Schoenaerts is the lead actor in the sensational, Oscar-nominated movie Bullhead. Together, they now have made De rouille et d'os. Is it sensational? Well, um, yes. Will it be nominated for an Oscar? Time will tell! Like those other two movies, De rouille et d'os is about strong characters, fighting their way through life against all odds. One of those characters is played by Schoenaerts, the Flemish actor who is on the verge of his breakthrough in international cinema. At least, that's what everyone in Cannes was talking about. Next year's American remake of the Flemish blockbuster Loft might well be his ticket to Hollywood. In De rouille et d'os, Schoenaerts basically plays the same sort of character as he did in Bullhead: lots of muscles, little brainpower. In this movie, he succeeds in embarrassing, hurting or insulting everyone he cares about: his child, his sister and his girlfriend. He seems incapable of showing the least bit of empathy. His rude and insensitive way of treating other people would almost be funny, if it weren't for the sometimes dramatic consequences. The story is about the relationship between this emotionally handicapped man and a physically handicapped woman. Although they have almost opposite characters, they find each other in their mutual experience of being different from the rest. His lack of sympathy and understanding is almost an advantage for her. She lost her legs, but he doesn't ask her how she copes or if she wants a shoulder to cry on. No, he asks her if she wants to take a dive in the ocean with him. 'Do you realize what you're saying?', she replies. He answers by carrying her in his arms to the sea and letting her discover that she can swim by using only her arms. Audiard knows how to let his two lead actors excel. Schoenaerts is completely believable as a primitive macho who means well but screws everything up nevertheless. And Marion Cotillard is cast perfectly as a strong-willed woman who refuses to be confined to a wheelchair. I was amazed by her physical appearance as an amputee - you'd swear that she had her legs cut off in order to be able to make this movie. The visual effects are awesome. But apart from the acting achievements, Audiard also has some nice visual treats. Most of the time, the movie focuses on the actors, but now and then aesthetics take over. The scene with Cotillard in an orca show is an example of superb directing: the huge animals are filmed in such a way, that it becomes clear something terrible is about to happen. De rouille et d'os shows superior craftsmanship on all levels.

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• There Is Something About Marion

  marcosaguado2017-08-27

  What a remarkable performance! Marion Cotillard as an actress, as an artist goes as far here as very few actresses have gone before - Total and utter truth no matter how wrenching - Maria Falconetti in The Passion Of Joan Of Arc, Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice, Anna Magnani in Bellissima and very few others, now, for me, Marion Cotillard in Rust And Bone belongs right up there among the sublime. Here I should be commenting on the film and my comment is all about her because Rust And Bone is her, Marion Cotillard. Her co-star, totally new to me, Matthias Schoenaerts, is superb as the handsome, unwitting agent provocateur. Not to be missed.

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• Great film in a special way

  ghent12012-05-18

  This Audiard film is one that grows on you. For quite some time into the film it seems both the film and its main characters aimlessly sit in their cocoon without breaking out. One feels some very vague potential in people but somehow their very lives seem the greatest impediments to its blossoming. One wonders what the film is about and where it is going. Like its characters, it feels like a bunch of loose ends aimlessly hanging about. But I must say that at the end of the movie it has grown on you: suddenly, as the story progresses, the film hatches, the characters break out of their cocoon and in retrospect one feels one has been witness to the improbable -and yet realistic- birth of an unusual but deep love story between two common people. The story has a hidden intensity of screenplay which is intensely performed by Schoenaerts and Cotillard. It creeps beneath your skin. If you like Audiard's way of developing gradual character drama with an intensity that seems to be implicit, buried beneath trailer-trash but still strongly present, you'll like this film. It's a story of how one can find anew a purpose in life when one feels like wasted trash. I watched this film in a full theatre of some 300 people. At the end most everybody sat silent for some minutes. It seems the film had touched something inside quite some of us there. Film as it should be.

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• Two actors make a good film a fantastic one

  jafar-iqbal2012-11-17

  There's a moment towards the end of Rust And Bone when something awful happens, and we are about to witness the ultimate tragedy. For that couple of minutes, the rest of the movie becomes irrelevant; we are just totally immersed in this act playing out. It's a brutal but wonderful sequence and, fortunately, it's not the first time we have such a scene in the movie. That's pretty much what Rust And Bone is: a series of wonderfully brutal sequences. The movie deals with the relationship between two fragile individuals from opposite ends of life. Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) is trying to be a better father and a better man; Stephanie (Marion Cotillard) is trying to rebuild her shattered life after a horrific accident. Their need for each other grows drastically, but their real lives threaten to get in the way. As far as story lines go, this isn't anything overly special. It's the kind of kitchen sink drama that we've seen Ken Loach and Mike Leigh do for ages. Fragile characters, broken homes, comedy out of tragedy, it's the usual stuff. Only difference here is that we're seeing it all play out in France, with French people speaking French and doing French things. But frankly, nothing is original these days; what matters more is the execution. And what sets Rust And Bone apart from other similarly-themed movies is the execution. Working class France is shot brilliantly, looking gorgeous and despairing all at the same time. The special effects are top-notch, and there is a somewhat jarring quality to the editing that really works. But what you really need to see this film for is Cotillard and Schoenaerts. I was trying to decide who I thought was the better actor in the film, but it's impossible to choose. They are both fantastic. I've never seen Matthias Schoenaerts before, but the guy is amazing. He manages to juggle pain and deadpan humour simultaneously, which is quite an achievement. Cotillard, meanwhile, is the usual perfect self that she is. Such an expressive face, and she's able to make even the hokiest of lines come off natural and genuine. I really didn't like her in The Dark Knight Rises but, clearly, she's at her best when she's speaking her natural language. They are what make these sequences brutal and wonderful, through their chemistry and ability to suck the audience in. The rest of the film is scattered with great supporting cast performances, especially Armand Verdure as Ali's son Sam. The young boy is a joy to watch, and can be added to that ever-growing list of strong pre-teen child actors. I'm pretty sure Rust And Bone has won a few awards, and deservedly so. It's amazing to watch, just because it's so fun to see brilliant performances. Like I said before, the story itself isn't probably that amazing. It's been done before; but it's done in such a way here, with those two central performances, that it feels fresh and original. You really should check it out.

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• A stunning achievement

  howard.schumann2012-09-30

  Co-written by Audiard and Thomas Bidegain, and adapted from a collection of short stories by the American author Craig Davidson, Jacques Audiard's genuinely moving Rust and Bone is the story of two wounded people who form a bond based on recognition and acceptance of the others pain. Supported a lovely score by Alexandre Desplat, the film is marked by astonishing performances by Oscar winner Marion Cotillard as Stephanie, a young whale trainer struggling to recover from a horrendous accident, and Matthias Schoenaerts as Ali, a brutish ex-boxer who is unable to acknowledge or express his feelings. Rust and Bone is not a film that is easy to describe. It is raw and visceral – a punch in the gut, yet it is also a film of intelligence and sensitivity, certainly an art film but one that is also geared to a larger audience, to anyone who has suffered pain and loneliness. When we first meet Ali, he is a man with dreams of making it big in kickboxing, but who is now at his lowest point. Unemployed, he has just left Belgium with his five-year-old son Sam (Armand Verdure) to live with his sister Anna (Corinne Masiero) and her husband in Antibes, a French resort town on the Mediterranean. As Audiard describes him, "he's nothing, he's a bum, he's nobody. He looks just like the people lining up at soup kitchens." Though Ali appears to have a good relationship wit Sam, he relates to him more like an older sibling than a responsible father, as someone able to provide unconditional love. That the film allows us to see Ali as both a man of ferocious energy and innate sensitivity, a three-dimensional human being who elicits our empathy, is a major accomplishment. Stephanie, who works as trainer of Orcas at a local marine park, is rescued by Ali from an overaggressive pursuer in the club where he is a bouncer and the two begin a tentative relationship. In a moment of honesty, Stephanie tells him that her greatest pleasure in a relationship is to be observed, "I like being watched," she says. "I like turning guys on, Get them all worked up, but then I get bored." The nature of their relationship, however, changes forever when Stephanie is seriously injured in an accident at the pool, losing both of her legs and, with them, her reason to live. The scene when Stephanie wakes up in the hospital to discover that her legs have been amputated is one of the most gut-wrenching I've seen. After a period of recovery, Stephanie, now fitted with artificial legs, reaches out to Ali for companionship and finds him open and receptive but brutally honest. For her, he is the only person she can trust to listen to her without judgment even though, in his brutal frankness, he tells her that she is "dressed like a whore," and casually suggests that they sleep together just to see if "she can still do it." Despite showing concern for her needs, Ali has moments of cruel insensitivity when he picks up a girl for a one-night stand even when Stephanie is with him, prompting her to ask him, "Am I a friend, a pal, a buddy like the others? If we continue, we have to do it right. I mean consideration." Ali is determined to become a professional fighter and becomes engaged in illegal activities such as street fighting and doing surveillance work for his sleazy friend Martial (Bouli Lanners), an activity that damages his relationship with Anna and forces Stephanie to be a spectator from the sidelines. Although the film is raw, there are some moments of exquisite lyricism as captured by cinematographer Stephane Fontaine, in particular, the scene where Stephanie interacts with a killer whale through a glass partition in an underwater tank. Despite the fact that there are some contrivances and melodrama in the plot that do not mesh with the film's gritty naturalism, Rust and Bone is a stunning achievement. As Eli moves to a new level of growth, not only with Stephanie but also with Anna and Sam, a haunting picture emerges of two people whose inner strength allows a crisis in their life to turn into a spiritual awakening, an opportunity to experience a new sense of being alive. As the Greek tragedian Aeschylus expressed it, "Pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

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