Rust and Bone (De Rouille et d'os) – Jacques Audiard, 2012

Jacques Audiard is back with his latest story affection in the darkest time of life. Rust and Bone grasps the audience’s attention from beginning to end with breath-taking cinematography and flawless performance from the actors.

The film opens with a close-up of a child (later we know his name is Sam) then slowly mingled with the shot of a long beach. The scene seems to be filmed with crosslight effect the warmth of the sun transcends the screen. Could this be just a fragment of the child’s dream? Or is this his memories flowing back to him as he lies sleeping peacefully? We don’t know for sure.

But we do know his story, or part of it at least. Sam and his dad, Ali (played by Matthias Schoenaerts) has been hitch-hiking a long way to his aunt, Ali’s sister’s house to stay. We also get to know Ali: practical, egotistic, aggressive and not too good with words. His background as a boxer leads him to a job at a nightclub, where he meets Stephanie (the wonderful Marion Cortillard). Initially being superior and a contrast to Ali from her elegant look to a busy social life, but deep down inside, Stephanie resembles muchly Ali’s character: she is also very self-centred and not used to holding back what she wants to speak. These similarities strike an understanding between the two quickly though without them noticing it.

It is Stephanie’s accident which would make both their lives change. Audiard constructs a brilliant build-up to it which keeps could keep in the audience in thrill through every single frame. A series of shot quickly put beside one another through cross-cutting represented the spectators watching Stephanie and her team of orcas trainers in an ill-fated performance. When a rebellious orcas shoots through water then lands on the platform and break it, the scene is filmed from an unclear view, which highlights the unpredictability of the cause and consequence of the incident. One thing is clear, as Stephanie is flung into the water, the silence signals how the world she knows is lost forever. When she wakes up, the hand of fate has caused a double amputation of her legs, coldly as the scene of her realisation.

Lonely and lost, a random phone call to Ali gives her the chance to go out and regain her self-confidence. As a man who lives to survive, Ali does not see Stephanie’s disability as a disadvantage to enjoying life as she still can. As a person of pride, Stephanie sees everything as her way to mark her existence onto the world (her job, lover, social life). Only when the accident happens does she get to see and feel the world as it really is. Through portraying the characters, Audiard tries to show that these events in the film are bound to happen. The film treats the dark times of life as forcing people to come to terms with themselves. For Ali, his own weakness behind the aggressiveness he so usually displays, for Stephanie, a way to mark her existence from the inside.

Rust and Bone, beside the seamless direction of Jacques Audiard, could not achieve its essence without cinematographer Stephane Fontaine (collaborating with Audiard since The Beat That My Heart Skipped) constructing the film’s endless beautiful scenes. The sun, a recurring factor is filmed in its most beauty of warmth and light as a sense of optimism. The film is filled with this beam, from the beach to Ali’s sister’s small courtyard, even behind the trees on a snowy day. The ending shows Sam along with Ali and Stephanie coming together - a happy ending though marked with many scars behind. It is a typical theme in Audiard’s films and is even more greatly demonstrated here as it earned him the highest award at the 2012 London Film Festival. The French auteur shows he is still going strong.

Originally published on Concrete UEA 20/11/2012.