Rust and Bone (2012)
Directed by Jacques Audiard
Written by Jacques Audiard
Starring Marion Cotillard, Matthias Schoenaerts
Release Date May 17th, 2012
Published November 10th, 2012
I was reading another critic's take on the foreign film entry "Rust and Bone" and was struck by the phrase 'misery porn.' I believe this same phrase has been attached to another Awards contender this season, the indie flick "Beasts of the Southern Wild." In both cases the phrase is an exaggeration, though as with most over-statement it carries an element of truth.
Both "Beasts of the Southern Wild" and "Rust and Bone" ladle on the dire circumstances of their protagonists with the thickness of heavy syrup. But, to call the portrayal of poverty in either film 'fetishistic' is to miss the point of both films. "Rust and Bone" for sure is not so much a portrait of poverty as it is a careful study of a romance between people defined by dire circumstance.
'Misery Porn'
Alain (Matthias Schoenaerts) is a lost soul only more alienated by the arrival in his life of a five year old son, Sam (Armand Verdure), thrust upon him by an absentee mother. Alain is on the run from something, though we aren't sure what. He's shifty and nervous at first glance and in the course of "Rust and Bone" we don't so much warm up to him as we come to accept who he is in the way the other characters in the film choose to.
Stephanie (Marion Cotillard) is more appealing though nearly as troubled. Our first glimpse of Stephanie comes as she picks a fight in a bar where Alain is a bouncer. She's bloodied and not terribly coherent, accepting Alain's offer of a ride home only as a taunt to a lover waiting back at her apartment.
They're both missing something
Why when Stephanie loses both her legs in an accident involving a killer whale, she's an Orca trainer when she's not picking bar fights, she chooses to call Alain is a mystery the film has no interest in clearing up. It's possible with his deep emotional wounds Stephanie see's an equivalent to her physical wounds but director Jaques Audiard is too smart to underline the connection.
To say that Alain and Stephanie begin a tentative romance is a misnomer. For Stephanie there is romance, for Alain there is just sport. Alain takes Stephanie to bed on a whim, figuring he's doing his disfigured friend a favor by showing her that her parts still function. Okay, the early sex scenes do somewhat underline Alain's missing emotional parts as what Stephanie is drawn to but not so much that it doesn't feel authentic.
Learning to love your damage
That's the thrust of "Rust and Bone," two damaged people learning to love the damage in each other. The rest of the film is filled out with the twin lures of sex and violence. The sex scenes in "Rust and Bone" are as powerful and compelling as any sex scene in 2012 and Audiard is equally unsparing in the film's violence; Alain takes to underground mixed martial arts fights as a way of making money and filling a need for self-punishment that he is incapable of explaining in words.
The further you get from "Rust and Bone" the more it resonates with you; Cotillard's beauty and despair mixes with Schoenaerts soulful brutality to create the most compelling and dark romance of the year. Both performances are award worthy as is the films elegant cinematography by Stephane Fontaine. I also loved director Audiard's use of American pop songs in unexpectedly poignant ways. Katy Perry's "Firework" is played to gloriously dramatic effect in one of the film's many powerful scenes.
"Rust and Bone" is not a movie I will likely ever watch again; it is at times quite bleak. That said, I can't help but admire the film even if I never see it again.
