Matthias Schoenaerts is Ali, a muscular unemployed wanderer who travels with his son Sam to the south of France where his sister lives. Obviously, Ali is one of those guys who constantly gets into trouble, a man he can hardly rely on, a selfish man who thinks exclusively of himself, and the main reason he got to his sister is to leave the little one on her and her husband’s back. To hint that the boy’s mother is a prostitute with whom Ali is no longer in contact, and this typically silent, muted furious and aggressive type for Schoenaerts will find a temporary job as a bouncer in a nightclub. There he will also meet Stephanie (Marion Cotillard), a girl who got into a fight with some guys and he will take her home.
Stephanie, on the other hand, is a killer whale trainer at a local water park, and during one performance there will be an accident in which she will be left without both legs. And unfortunately, what is often and in reality the situation when such accidents happen, until yesterday surrounded by friends Stephanie will be left completely alone and in deep depression. Trying to get used to the new life, she will contact Alija, who in the meantime has dedicated himself to illegal street kick-boxing matches, and although the two of them can’t really be more different, a romance will develop between them. Had the accident not happened, it is almost certain that these two people would never have met again, and with a guy who seems completely cold, stubborn, insensitive, raw, she will start to feel freer and spend more and more time together.
Unfortunately, Ali is still one of those guys who is very difficult to rely on, and he seems to evoke problems and bad situations, and there will be a number of such people by the end of the film. Renowned French filmmaker Jacques Audiard shot an emotional and touching drama he wrote with frequent screenwriting collaborator Thomas Bidegan based on a collection of stories by Canadian writer Craig Davidson. He was “Rust and Bone” or “De rouille et d’os” in the original in stark contrast to two of his previous films, the brutal prison crime drama “A Prophet” and the neo-Neir crime “The Beat That My Heart Skipped” about a guy involved in a crime that would like to be a concert pianist.
Both Schoenaerts and Cotillard are great in their roles and great performances they actually carry this touching but also at times shocking atypical romantic drama that avoids clichés and offers numerous surprises. Some less skilled director might have allowed a story like this to slip into a pathetic and sweet melodrama that suits the viewer’s taste, but Audiard finely combined the gentle poetics and somewhat harsh style of the previous films. Everything here seems completely realistic from start to finish, and the premiere of “Rust and Bone” was in the main program of Cannes, where Audiard won the Golden Palm with the next (and somewhat weaker) film “Dheepan”.