DE ROUILLE ET D'OS is a love story. Hardly gentle, it tracks an unlikely love affair between contrasting people hurled together by harsh fates: a legless young woman and a second-rate boxer.
A study of two disabled people -- one physically, the other emotionally -- and the extreme states to which they must be pushed in order to connect.
Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts), homeless and poor, with a five year old son he barely knows, moves from grim, urban northern France to the sunny Provence.
Working as a night-club bouncer, the muscular Ali rescues Stephanie (Marion Cotillard) from a drunken brawl.
Attractive and seemingly confident, she trains killer Orca whales who perform for the public at Marineland. But one show goes badly wrong; she is attacked, loses both legs (convincingly, thanks to remarkable special effects), and is left wheelchair-bound.
After a while, she calls Ali.
At this point Audiard’s main theme — physicality in various forms — emerges.
Ali is fighting, and wins money from bloody, illegal bouts. He also enjoys fast, casual love-making.
Yet he is very considerate with Stephanie, helps her rediscover the joy of swimming and the consolations of sex.
She responds to the giddy euphoria of infectious pop music, bopping in her wheelchair to the B-52s’ Love Shack, and rehearsing upper-body whale-training moves to Katy Perry’s Firework.
The couple negotiate their relationship clumsily (Ali is not an emotionally literate man) and it takes more crises to advance it.
Audiard shoots largely in a series of jagged, startling images.
Cotillard and Schoenaerts give heavily internalized performances marked by sporadic physical outbursts involving athletics and a lot of exciting sex.
But one scene is quietly breath-taking: Stephanie returns to work, summons a whale to her through an aquarium’s glass wall, and coaxes it to follow the movements of her body.
Parallels can be drawn with Javier Bardem’s Biuitiful : both show the underbelly of their chosen settings, both deal with a devastating bodily trauma for central characters, and both also have a visceral nature to them that is profoundly affecting.
(Biutiful was one of my favorite films, and certainly one of my favorite performances.)...
This is a film of genuine power. Rust and Bone may not be for everyone. But it is a complex and assured piece.
giulia d
july 2012
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