Rust and Bone Review

There is a moment in Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone in which Stephanie, played by Marion Cotillard, recalls her routine as a whale performer and goes through her motions as Katy Perry’s “Firework” accompanies her every thrust of hand.  At this point in the film, Stephanie has already lost her legs from a killer whale performance gone wrong, and she replays her memories as she sits in her wheelchair staring into the sky.  She begins her motions, the music kicks in, and she mimes the routine with the same gusto she had as an actual performer.  She remembers a better time when she could walk, enjoy her passion, and work any crowd of guys with her good looks.  I would like to think Audiard imagined this scene to be an emotionally charged high point of the film.    

Instead, the scene is hilarious and as contrived as can be.  It’s also a metaphor for the entire film.  You see, Audiard has written a love story where we get to watch a beautiful woman lose her legs and then gain stature as the sidekick to the beefy jughead Ali, played by Matthias Schoenaerts.  Like the aforementioned scene, the entire film is one large slice of melodramatic ham.  Audiard will make you cry and feel sorry for these characters, even if he has to cut off some legs and objectify a body or two.

So why go through the trouble, Audiard and company?  Better yet, what is the point?

Rust and Bone, in the vein of other nauseating melodramas such as Precious, Brokeback Mountain, and Slumdog Millionaire, offers a skewed glance into the life of the Other (the female, the handicapped) and places the already stereotyped characters on display for the audience to gawk and cry at.  We applaud the filmmakers for giving us a “realistic” portrayal of the hardships of the Other’s life, and Audiard’s film is no exception.  What’s worse is Audiard diminishes the broken characters to bodies in motion.  Stephanie is the spectacle of a woman without legs, and Audiard paints her body as a sexual tool.  Ali oozes machismo, and his addiction to fighting and sex is about as trite as homosexual cowboys.  The camera objectifies one then the other in order to develop characters that are no more than stock melodramatic cardboard cutouts.

The screenplay is also littered with extraneous plot points and odd development decisions.  Before her accident, Stephanie lives life as a heart-stopping, bar-hopping young woman.  She’s bad; got it?  Audiard’s decision to have her train whales is laughable and cliché; the trait is similar to the bad boy who writes poetry.  The whole business with Ali and the surveillance systems also seems about as random as whale training.  Audiard randomly selects these faux-traits.  There would be no way any director could develop a character with a story as uneventful as Rust and Bone.  The solution for Audiard is to load up on preconfigured traits and out-of-nowhere plot points.    

Contrivances aside, Marion Cotillard will be a favorite at the Cannes Film Festival this year, and rightly so.  Her performance establishes her as one of the best around.  In what is arguably the least objectifying scene in the film, Stephanie awakens in a hospital bed and searches the room confusedly.  The camera never closes up on her face.  Instead, we see her from a slight distance, and we watch as she lifts her sheet and sees her legs for the first time.  She hits the floor, a nurse rushes in, and she screams, “What did they do to my legs?”  The scene is fantastic and overflowing with emotion.   There is no spectacle here.  For the moment, Cotillard is playing a person whose life has been interrupted, not a body on display.

I cannot say that this film is about the capabilities of the human body.  I cannot believe that Rust and Bone illustrates people and their strengths, weaknesses, and overall resilience.  I cannot believe in these things when I see Stephanie and Ali, both broken people, sexed up in a way that makes me question Audiard’s motives.  I feel the same when I see Stephanie, the handicapped woman, gaze slack-jawed at Ali as he fights with his bare hands. 

I can believe that the majority of this film is shallow and objectifying.  Cotillard does not deserve to be attached to such a film that shoots for a meaningful drama but lands somewhere in the realm of insult.     

Screenplay by Jacques Audiard and Thomas Bidegain

Directed by Jacques Audiard

Produced by Jacques Audiard, Martine Cassinelli, and Pascal Caucheteux

Starring Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts

120 mins