Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts make this difficult romance moving without making its people easy to like. Jacques Audiard handles desire and dependence with conviction, though the plot eventually pushes too hard.
Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone is a forceful romance, made convincing by two actors who can suggest need without making it attractive. It asks us to take desire seriously in lives where money, injury and violence already demand attention. That could make for a punishing evening, but the film has enough sexual frankness and awkward humour to keep its people from becoming a collection of problems. We recommend it, with a reservation about how insistently the screenplay eventually pushes for a response.
Marion Cotillard plays Stéphanie, an orca trainer who loses her legs, without treating her desire as an uplifting surprise. The performance allows frustration and appetite to coexist; Stéphanie need not become agreeable before the film takes her seriously as a woman who wants sex. Matthias Schoenaerts, as boxer Alain ‘Ali’ van Versch, gives her someone whose physical assurance does not extend to understanding other people. Their attraction is persuasive because both actors allow it to remain awkward, with neither quite sure what the other expects.
Matthias Schoenaerts is especially good at making a man’s inability to recognise another person’s needs feel thoughtless without making it harmless. His strength does not excuse him, and the performance resists asking us to mistake bluntness for honesty. Marion Cotillard makes Stéphanie’s growing sensual confidence equally complicated: being wanted does not settle what she wants from this man. The intimate passages are absorbing because both actors leave room for the possibility that the other person has understood nothing.
Stéphane Fontaine’s handheld cinematography makes the fights feel close enough to be unpleasant. We flinched, because the force of the blows is given more weight than the fighters’ skill. Juliette Welfling’s editing gives the changes between violence and intimacy a roughness that suits these people, without making every encounter feel the same. The film keeps us conscious of how vulnerable their bodies are, including when they seem most physically assured.
Michel Barthélémy’s production design gives the economic hardship a credible everyday setting, with little sense that poverty is being arranged for our admiration. Money matters here because it restricts what people can do, including how much attention they have left for each other. Alexandre Desplat’s music suits the film’s readiness to be romantic, although the soundtrack sometimes adds insistence where the performances have already done enough. The actors are capable of carrying the quieter passages without much help.
The weakness lies in the screenplay by Jacques Audiard and Thomas Bidegain, which does not always trust that relationship to hold us. As the story progresses, the dramatic pressure begins to feel applied from outside, and the plotting grows more conspicuous. We will not describe where it goes, but the attempt to demand a stronger response risks making the earlier, less forced feeling seem insufficient. There is already enough happening between these two people to sustain the film.
We would not choose it for reassurance that falling in love makes people better. At 123 minutes, it asks us to spend time with behaviour that a more accommodating romance would soften, and that is part of its appeal. The violence can be hard to watch; the intimacy is scarcely more comfortable. See it for Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts, and allow the plot its occasional bad judgement.
