Rust and Bone (3/5 Stars)

There really is not much to talk about in Rust and Bone. It is a French movie written and directed by Jacques Audiard. It stars Matthias Schoenaerts as an indigent father who moves in with his sister and gets several different small jobs, one of which is being a bouncer. While bouncing at a club he breaks up a fight, which includes Marion Cotillard and another gentlemen. He offers to drive her home and she accepts. The conversation is not all that exciting or memorable and the two forget each other for a while.

And in real life they would probably never see each other again. But then, Marion Cotillard, loses both her legs at her job training killer whales at a Sea World sort of place. I am not exactly sure how it happens. The director chose to shoot the scene from below the water looking up. Anyway, Marion’s character must not have all that much friends and family because moping at home several months later sans legs, she decides to call up the bouncer (now a security guard) she had that uneventful car ride with a long time ago. And this guy remembers her, pays her a visit, and takes her to the beach, carrying her on his back in places the wheelchair cannot get to. He does this with very little fanfare as if it is not that big a deal. Why he does it or thinks it is not a big deal to do so, I really have no idea. The people in this story aren’t that articulate.

Really, they are not that articulate at all about anything. The writing here is particularly boring. Entire scenes can happen without any significant exchanges between people, leaving what is not said to the thankfully decent acting chops of Marion and Matthias. In this vein, Marion does a pretty good job as a double-amputee. But there really is not much to these roles. The movie has some novelty to it in that it contains a double-amputee, but a movie usually needs a little more to than the presence of some physical malady or tragedy to be a good movie. Otherwise it is just like a disease-of-the-week picture.

There was one scene that I particularly liked. The movie presents the Matthias character as a bit of an easy come easy go philanderer. Apparently he is good looking to the point that he can seduce a woman within an hour of meeting her. (At one point the movie presents an unfortunate jump cut. 1^st shot: Matthias is working out at the gym and walks past an attractive woman teaching aerobics. 2^nd shot: Matthias is eating a sandwich in the gym courtyard. The attractive woman stands behind in the distance smoking a cigarette. 3^rd shot: Matthias and the woman are energetically having sex in the gym alleyway. I tell you, they skipped the most interesting part of it all between that 2^nd and 3^rd shot.) The relationship between Matthias and Marion though is not particularly sexual. But at one point, after he has gotten work boxing and wins a big tournament, they go out to celebrate at the club where they first met. Marion by this time is using bionic legs and a cane. Matthias asks her if she wants to dance. She says no. So he goes off to the dance floor, easily picks up another women, and then leaves the club with her a few hours later much to the chagrin of Marion. 

There is something commendable I think about setting up one of the major characters as somebody that would plausibly do something like that and then actually going and having them do it in a scene. I thought it was pretty funny and I also especially liked the scene the next morning when Marion confronts him about it and he refuses to be anything but silently annoyed. He’s a total jerk but does have a point. It isn’t like Marion was being serious about him in their relationship and it’s not like he was lying about the type of person he was. And it’s not like Marion doesn’t understand. It wasn't a break-up scene I was watching.

But other than that the movie is pretty forgettable and I cannot really recommend seeing it, especially with so many other good movies out there.