RUST AND BONE

Gorgeous, sometimes brutal, this film deserves a  flood of awards

Today, most auspicious publishing date of this newly minted edition of The Lady, is my 30th birthday. Joyeux anniversaire to me! A large part of my 20s has been spent coming to terms with the fact that I will never be Marion Cotillard, but she is so good in Rust And Bone, that I’m just about ready to accept it and move on.

Hoovering up awards everywhere, including last month’s London Film Festival, Rust And Bone is the latest film from writer/ director Jacques Audiard, whose Oscar-nominated 2009 film A Prophet confused many a vicar into seeing a gritty film about the French underworld.

It too dips in and out of an underworld, but one in plain sight. Stéphanie (Cotillard) is a mouthy killer-whale trainer at a Marineland park, who meets bouncer Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) after she gets into a brawl at his nightclub. He gives her his number and chats her up. She’s not having any of it. They part.

A life-changing – and incredibly well done – work accident in which Stéphanie loses her legs, leads to her finally calling him, and a strange friendship is formed. Ali is completely unembarrassed by her new body, taking her swimming in the sea, and carrying her around.

Both are firmly oriented towards the physical, rather than the emotional: when they begin an affaire, Stéphanie insists on no kissing. Ali texts her to say that he is OP – ‘operational’ – and this unromantic shorthand soon becomes a mutual call to horizontal arms.

Ali’s unflappability impresses Stéphanie at first, and she even becomes his boxing manager, but it soon becomes clear that Ali risks losing everything. Ali is unfazed to the point of extreme selfishness. He and his little son Sam have moved in with his sister and her husband and Ali doesn’t seem to care about people with much depth. A new job involves spying on people who work in supermarkets – his sister works as a cashier, so you know this can’t end well – and he only really fi nds release in the illicit world of bare-knuckle boxing.

Much of the film is spent waiting for something truly dreadful to befall the characters. But Audiard lets them breathe – they make mistakes, bad things happen, but the twin redemptions of love and freedom are always in sight.

The special effects used to make Cotillard a convincing amputee are extraordinary. This is a gorgeous, sometimes necessarily brutal film filled with tiny moments of power from Cotillard: Stéphanie sitting on her balcony, alone, proudly going through the movements of her killer-whale routine to an invisible audience. A reunion with one of her whales is spellbinding, and the chemistry between Cotillard and Schoenaerts explodes off the screen.

Rust And Bone is another triumph for Jacques Audiard, and enough to ensure that, while I no longer want to be Marion Cotillard, I will quite happily spend my 30s continuing to toast her brilliance.