Rust and Bone

Rust and Bone
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Jacques Audiard
Produced by	Jacques Audiard Martine Cassinelli Pascal Caucheteux
Screenplay by	Jacques Audiard Thomas Bidegain
Based on	Rust and Bone  by Craig Davidson
Starring	Marion Cotillard Matthias Schoenaerts
Music by	Alexandre Desplat
Cinematography	Stéphane Fontaine
Edited by	Juliette Welfling
Production company	Why Not Productions Canal+ Ciné+ France Télévisions
Distributed by	UGC Distribution Lumière StudioCanal
Release dates	17 May 2012 (2012-05-17) (France & Belgium)
Running time	123 minutes[1]
Country	France Belgium
Language	French
Budget	€15.4 million ($20 million)
Box office	$25,807,712[2]

Rust and Bone (French: De rouille et d'os) is a 2012 French–Belgian romantic drama film directed by Jacques Audiard, starring Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts, based on Craig Davidson's short story collection of the same name. It tells the story of an unemployed 25-year-old man who falls in love with a killer whale trainer.^[3]

The film competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival^[4][5] and received positive early reviews and a ten-minute standing ovation at the end of its screening.^[6] It was a critical and box office hit in France^[7][8] and was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award, two Golden Globes, two BAFTA Awards, three Magritte Awards, and nine César Awards, winning four, including Most Promising Actor for Matthias Schoenaerts.

Plot

Alain van Versch, an unemployed father in his mid 20s known as Ali, arrives in Antibes, southern France, to look for work to support his young son, Sam. Having no money, he crashes with his sister Anna, who already has her own share of problems with money and temporary employment.

Ali gets a job as a bouncer in a nightclub but still keeps his passion burning for fighting. On a usual evening in the night club, Ali meets Stéphanie and escorts her safely to her home after she is injured in a brawl at the club. She works at a local marine tourist park where she suffers a tragic accident during a show and wakes up in the hospital to realize that her legs have been amputated. Ali meets a guy at work who informs him about a kick boxing fixture he can make money from. Stéphanie, now in a wheelchair, is terminally depressed and gives Ali a call. Ali visits her and takes her to a beach where they swim.

Over a period of time, Ali and Stéphanie spend a lot of time together and Stéphanie starts to feel better about herself in Ali's company. She gets artificial limbs and starts to walk again. Stéphanie accompanies Ali to his mixed martial arts fights and is surprised to learn he has a son. After a frank discussion, Ali offers to have sex with Stéphanie to help her adjust to her new body and their friendship then evolves to include casual sex. Ali, Stéphanie, and some friends visit the same night club where Ali used to work. Ali goes to the dance floor and flirts with a girl as Stéphanie watches curiously. Ali goes away with the girl leaving a dejected Stéphanie with other friends. The next day Stéphanie questions Ali about their relationship status. Their intimacy increases and a symbiosis forms between them, with Stéphanie managing Ali's bets for his fighting.

Anna is fired from her job when the managers realize she has been taking home expired food products. Anna blames Ali for this, as Ali was involved in an odd job where he installed spy cameras in work areas at the direction of the management to spy on the activities of their employees. This results in a standoff between Ali and Anna's partner and Ali leaves. Sam stays with Anna while Ali goes to a combat sports training facility near Strasbourg (as evidenced by earlier references in the film and the fact that Anna's partner drops Sam off on the way to a delivery in Colmar), losing touch with Stéphanie. Sam visits Ali at his facility for a day in deep winter and both are shown playing in the snow and on a frozen lake. A weak spot on the frozen lake cracks and Sam falls through the ice, and swiftly loses consciousness, submerged in the icy waters. Ali momentarily distracted by a call of nature, takes a while to realize that Sam has had a dangerous accident. Once he spots the hole in the ice and finds Sam in the frozen lake, Ali releases a desperate volley of punches to break the surface and gets an unconscious Sam out. In the process, Ali fractures his hands.

Sam survives and in the hospital Ali breaks down while talking to Stéphanie on the phone and confesses his love for her. As the film closes, Ali is shown to be celebrating a post-match victory at a professional sports combat event in Warsaw. As Ali narrates, he explains how severe injuries to the hands are a lifelong disability which at first seems contradictory to the victorious nature of the scene until he takes Sam by the hand on the way out of the door, at last without distraction from his parental duties. They are joined by Stéphanie.

Cast

• Marion Cotillard as Stéphanie
• Matthias Schoenaerts as Ali
• Armand Verdure as Sam
• Corinne Masiero as Anna
• Céline Sallette as Louise
• Bouli Lanners as Martial
• Mourad Frarema as Foued
• Jean-Michel Correia as Richard
• Yannick Choirat as Simon

Production

The film was produced by Why Not Productions for €15.4 million.^[9] It was co-produced with France 2 Cinéma, Page 114 and the Belgian company Les Films du Fleuve. Filming started on 4 October 2011 and lasted eight weeks. Locations were used Antibes, Cannes, Belgium, Paris, northern France, and Brussels.^[3] To prepare for the role, Cotillard took swimming lessons and spent a week at Marineland to learn how to direct whales.^[10] Explaining how the team adjusted to Stéphanie having no legs, Cotillard told: "When we did the first costume fitting, we had to try those pants that were empty of my legs and I had to fold my legs in the wheelchair. That image was so powerful that we kept it throughout the movie. And also we worked with amazing CGI guys."^[11]

Release

Marion Cotillard, Jacques Audiard, and Matthias Schoenaerts at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival.

The film premiered on 17 May 2012 in competition at the 65th Cannes Film Festival.^[12] It was released in France and Belgium through UGC Distribution the same day.^[13] StudioCanal UK acquired the British distribution rights,^[3] and the film was released in the UK on 2 November 2012. It opened in the United States through Sony Pictures Classics on 23 November 2012.^[14]

Critical reception

The film was screened at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and received early positive critical reactions. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 82% based on 156 reviews^[15] Metacritic gave the film a rating of 73/100, based on 39 reviews.^[16] HitFix praised Audiard "for the way he takes melodramatic convention and bends it to his own particular sensibility, delivering a powerful tale about the reminders we all carry of the pains that have formed us" and found Cotillard's work "incredible, nuanced and real".^[17] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film a four-star rating out of five, writing Rust and Bone is "a passionate and moving love story which surges out of the screen like a flood tide" and "its candour and force are matched by the commitment and intelligence of its two leading players".^[18] Time's Mary Corliss found that the romance is "sometimes engrossing, sometimes exasperating" and that the cinematography recalls Kings Row and An Affair to Remember. Corliss also wrote, "Schoenaerts exudes masculinity that is both effortless and troubled" while "Cotillard demonstrates again her eerie ability to write complex feelings on her face, as if from the inside, without grandstanding her emotions" and added, "her strong, subtle performance is gloriously winning on its own".^[19] Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune thought Schoenaerts' sensitive-brute instincts recall Marlon Brando and Tom Hardy.^[20] Critic A. O. Scott of The New York Times called the film "a strong, emotionally replete experience, and also a tour de force of directorial button pushing."^[21] Roger Ebert, who did not review the film upon its original release, later added it to his "Great Films" series and gave four stars.^[22] Cate Blanchett wrote a review for Variety praising Marion Cotillard's performance in the film, describing it as "simply astonishing" and said that "Marion has created a character of nobility and candour, seamlessly melding herself into a world we could not have known without her. Her performance is as unexpected and as unsentimental and raw as the film itself".^[23]

Awards and nominations

See also

• 2012 in film
• Cinema of France
• Cinema of Belgium
• Disability in the arts
• List of mixed martial arts films
• List of films featuring mental disorders

References

External links

• Official website
• Rust and Bone at the Internet Movie Database
• Rust and Bone at AllMovie
• Rust and Bone at Rotten Tomatoes
• Rust and Bone at Metacritic
• Rust and Bone at Box Office Mojo