[critical] Rust and Bone

Ali finds himself with Sam, 5 years, on the arm. It is his son, he barely knows. Without home, without money and without friends, Ali finds refuge with his sister in Antibes. Following a brawl in a nightclub, his fate crosses that of Stephanie.

He is poor, she is beautiful and full insurance. It is a princess. Everything opposes them.

Stephanie is a trainer of killer whales at Marineland. It will require that the show turns to tragedy for a phone call in the night brought them together again.

Author’s Note

[rating:8/10]

• Release Date : may 17, 2012

• Directed by Jacques Audiard

• Film French, belgian

• With Marion Cotillard, Matthias Schoenaerts, Armand Verdure

• Duration : 1h55min

• Trailer :

So it was true, the bullshit that wrote les Inrocks a few years ago : the most interesting movies of the year are in Cannes. The previous edition has provided us with some of the most important films of 2011 : Tree of life, Polisse, The artist, Drive, Melancholia… After beginning 2012 as winded as disappointing with only surnageaient Pirates in the dough (no, Millennium is not a masterpiece, of course Fincher is still talented but the storyline felt too warm ; yes, Take Shelter is that of the sub-Shyamalan, and even Shyamalan normal, this is more a compliment ; and the rest… what rest ?), it is little to say that this new festival was awaited anxiously.

And it starts strong with Moonrise Kingdom the dandy aesthete Wes Anderson as of the first day and then the new opus of Audiard’s the next day, both of which are shown in cinemas at the same time. The latter is expected as the messiah since he told us a story of a prophet. He had then chosen the genre film, without a specific message to pass, just the desire to create a new mythology to the film and the result exceeded all expectations. It gave a true lesson of cinema and all its little playmates could only admire it from afar, from below, to be more precise.

Here, he seems to have no message, not more (we’ll come back to) but wondered how one could tell a story of love today by making something new. Never stingy with images that impress the retina permanently, he chose to make one of the two protagonists-a(e) handicapped(e), following an accident to make it look more dramatic and not left casually in his chair but we can see the legs mutilated and all the difficulties to move as a result (kudos to the passage to the special effects who know how to make it believable at any time).

Marion Cotillard is the opportunity to justify all the good that everyone thinks of it from The Kid. In the meantime, we saw it everywhere and rented often, without being able to say what made her a superior being, as his roles in Public Enemies, or Inception were rather anecdotal. She comes here to spend a lot without trying to make whining. In front of it, a wardrobe, a brute-force, revealed by Bullhead : Matthias Schoenaerts. It has a presence in each plan and has no evil to exist in the face of an actress who is experienced : the camera loves her.

The two actors perfectly symbolise the two categories that have always populated the filmography of Jacques Audiard. On one side, the illustrious unknown (or almost) that devour the screen, and are parties to an international career : Mathieu Kassovitz in Watching the men fall and then A hero very discreet and Tahar Rahim in A prophet. On the other, the actors already known, but that it will look different after : Vincent Cassel (On my lips) or Romain Duris (the beat that my heart stopped). Beside them, the supporting roles are all very good, indicative of excellent direction of the actors and have a taste of too little : Céline Sallette, Bouli Lanners and Corinne Masiero.

We believe very strongly in the Dardenne brothers, among others thanks to the presence of belgian actors, the film being half-French half-belgian, in front of this story that wants to be the ” social realism “. It is this which parasite a little emotion : all the misery of the world comes down on these characters, unemployment, accidents, and it can sometimes seem too much. If message there is, it is here : Audiard denounces the dehumanization of work, the neon signs of these sheds impersonal that serve as shops on the outskirts of all our cities and small heads that inhabit them. The same ones who treat their employees like shit and who buy cameras for the monitor, installed by people who are exploited. The work of some could turn in the other, it is the eternal story of the poor who fight against other poor people.

Fortunately, the staging is sufficiently controlled to raise this greyness above the level… of a Rosetta, say, and do something bright (aaah, this tooth rolling on the ground, symbol of a fight more or less successfully ! oooh, these now famous clear-obscure “Audiard” ! brrr, this sequence in the snow…). Not the best film of its author, but it’s still well above the average or a remake of the Untouchables by the Dardenne.