Rust And Bone (De Rouille Et D’Os)

BB.5

(out of 5)

Matthias Schoenaerts arrives in Antibes with his young son after breaking up with his wife, moving in with his grocery store clerk sister and truck driver brother-in-law and searching for a new life with very few resources to rely upon. While working as a bouncer at a swanky club, he meets a beautiful woman (Marion Cotillard) with a problematic attraction to trouble. The next time he sees her, he finds her in a devastated condition: her job as a whale trainer at a theme park has left her missing her legs after a freak accident in the pool with an ornery orca. The two of them begin a friendship that turns sexual and then turns tender, she managing him as he earns money prizefighting and he boosting her ego through her rehabilitation back into the world of the upwardly mobile. It’s a smoothly polished film, acted to perfection and attractive to the eye, but Jacques Audiard barely scratches the surface of everything he is exploring here. The two actors have terrific chemistry but their characters are hardly memorable, he little more than a champion brooder and she defined solely by her handicap and little else. It goes to some strange and dark places for such an unmemorable film, but it’s only passably diverting, a shame given the superb work being done by both leads.