November 22, 2012
“I’m hungry.” Those are the first words spoken in “Rust and Bone,” uttered by a 5-year-old boy named Sam (Armand Verdure), who means them in the most literal way. Hunger of various kinds — sexual desire, emotional need, the desperate, contradictory longings for freedom and security — drives every character in this muscular melodrama from the French director Jacques Audiard.
Sam and his father, Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts), fleeing a very bad, vaguely described situation with the boy’s mother, arrive in Antibes, a sun-kissed town on the Côte d’Azur that has rarely looked less glamorous. Mr. Audiard allows a few glimpses of palm trees, beaches and sparkling Mediterranean waters, but his greater interest is in the day-to-day blue-collar realities of people like Ali and his sister, Anna (Corinne Masiero), a supermarket cashier in whose home Sam and Ali land.
Not that “Rust and Bone,” class conscious though it is, concerns itself primarily with the social realities of contemporary France. Some of those — economic hardship, family breakdown, the persistent antagonism between management and labor — linger in the background, much as the country’s ethnic and religious divisions shadowed “A Prophet,” Mr. Audiard’s galvanic 2010 prison drama. But this is, as the title implies, a movie (freely adapted from stories by the Canadian writer Craig Davidson) about more primal matters, and specifically about the unlikely bond that forms between two damaged souls and the battered bodies that house them.
Soon after Anna helps him find a job as a nightclub bouncer, Ali, a former prizefighter, meets Stephanie (Marion Cotillard). Nothing much passes between them at first, though he checks out her legs and she witnesses, with quiet pleasure, his offhand humiliation of the boyfriend she lives with but doesn’t much like. Later, after a horrific, life-altering catastrophe, Stephanie finds Ali’s phone number and, acting on an impulse she may not understand, calls him.
Stephanie works at a Sea World-like amusement park, leading orcas in acrobatic performances. An accident — that is, a killer whale obeying its instincts instead of its training — causes her to lose both legs just above the knee. Stephanie suspects that Ali might be able to help her out of her post-traumatic despair, or at least put his physical strength to some use. She is right on both counts but not necessarily in the ways that she, Ali or the audience might anticipate.
A plot summary of “Rust and Bone” might suggest a maudlin, therapeutic fable of healing, and in many ways — or, let’s say, in hindsight — the movie is just that. But its conventional, sentimental essence (which is overtly revealed only at the end) is effectively complicated, indeed almost undone, by the jagged textures of the filmmaking and the naturalistic intensity of the performances. If this is a love story, it is also a combat picture, in which the principal characters are at war with themselves, each other and the cruelty of the world.
The orca that maimed Stephanie was not a malevolent Moby-Dick but rather a creature behaving in accordance with its nature. (In this respect it resembles the tiger in “Life of Pi,” a far dreamier depiction of the struggle for dignity and survival in the face of adversity.) Stephanie and Ali are trying to move in the opposite direction, to humanize and discipline their wilder impulses. Trying to establish some rules for their increasingly complicated friends-with-benefits relationship, Stephanie tells Ali that they must proceed with “delicacy” — “not like animals.”
But at the same time it is precisely Ali’s brutish qualities — and Stephanie’s own half-unconscious responses to them — that make him matter so much to her. In addition to some questionable security work installing surveillance cameras in stores and warehouses, Ali, under the wing of a shaggy crook named Martial (Bouli Lanners), starts fighting in illegal, bare-knuckle fights. The unbridled violence of these bouts is exciting to Stephanie.
And also to Mr. Audiard, who sometimes seems impatient with the limitations of film as a visual medium. He wants you to smell the sweat and feel the fleshy impact of every moment, to climb inside the suffering, yearning skins of Ali and Stephanie and feel the things that they do, whether they are swimming, fighting or having sex.
The removal of Ms. Cotillard’s legs — including in scenes in which she wears a bathing suit or nothing — is surely one of the most impressive special-effects feats of the year, and a reminder that digital cinema is not all about accessorizing wizards, monsters and superheroes. But the greater marvel is Ms. Cotillard herself, an actress of limitless bravery and supernatural poise, who is both beauty and beast. Mr. Schoenaerts is her perfect foil and complement, as large and coarse as she is small and delicate, and also as tender as she is tough.
“Rust and Bone” is a strong, emotionally replete experience, and also a tour de force of directorial button pushing. Mr. Audiard is a canny showman, adept at manipulating the audience’s feelings and expectations with quick edits and well-chosen songs. (In addition to Bon Iver and Bruce Springsteen, “Rust and Bone” makes surprisingly effective use of Katy Perry’s “Firework.”)
I don’t mean to diminish the film; I’m trying, instead, to acknowledge its power while pointing out some of its limitations. This is, in the end, the kind of big-hearted boxing movie that has long been a Hollywood staple, coupled with a tale of disability that is equally familiar. It’s something of a fairy tale, in other words, but one that casts its spell with a rough, raw and sometimes thrillingly ugly magic.
“Rust and Bone” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Sex, fighting, killer whales and parental neglect.
Rust and Bone
Opens on Friday in Manhattan.
Directed by Jacques Audiard; written by Mr. Audiard and Thomas Bidegain, based on the short-story collection “Rust and Bone” by Craig Davidson; director of photography, Stéphane Fontaine; edited by Juliette Welfling; music by Alexandre Desplat; art direction by Michel Barthélémy; costumes by Virginie Montel; released by Sony Pictures Classics. In French, with English subtitles. Running time: two hours.
from: http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/11/23/movies/rust-and-bone-starring-marion-cotillard.html?_r=0
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Marion Cotillard was born on September 30th, 1975 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Cotillard
September 30th, 1975
30 +1+9+7+5 = 52 = her “secret” number = To die for.
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numerology for Friday December 21st, 2012 (the “end of the Mayan calendar”) at:
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comprehensive summary and list of predictions for 2012:
http://predictionsyear2012.com/
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predictions for the year 2013 are at:
numerology behind the news 