Our March Sunday Corner With Lee Liberman: Jacques Audiard's RUST AND BONE

Rust and Bone (de rouille et d’os):  

the taste of blood when a blow to 

the mouth crushes lips against teeth 

Noted French director Jacques Audiard (shown below) wrote the screenplay and directed the much feted 2012 film, RUST AND BONE, streaming now on Netflix and elsewhere, based on short stories by Canadian Craig Davidson from his “Rust and Bone” collection.

The film is set in Antibes, nearby Cannes on the Cote d’Azure — a surprisingly un-lux world of everyday realism — a dark, unglamorous slice of life in a blue-collar community where there’s economic hardship and labor conflict. Sun glinting on ocean adds irony rather than glamour and so do some American pop tunes, like Katie Perry’s ‘Firework’ included in the score by Alexandre Desplat. (At last Sunday’s Academy Awards Desplat won the Oscar for best original score for best picture, The Shape of Water, and has scored dozens of films.)

This film is full of contradiction — a strangely wonderful and uplifting love story deployed in a gritty, feel-bad movie. It is also a soap opera designed to push one’s buttons, a beauty-and-beast fairy tale in which the melodrama is far overshadowed by its compelling characters.

Playing Ali is Belgian actor of growing note, Matthias Schoenaerts. Ali is a loner, a boxer, drifter, grifter, and father to little Sam, (played by Armand Verdure— see them below), whom he has collected from a mother using him as a drug mule, and traveled to Ali’s sister who lives in Antibes on the coast. Director Audiard uses the odd little boy as a touchstone and a lingering source of concern. Sam is in the shadow but an unspoken witness of adult behavior, a victim in a life made uncertain by his elders whom we see through his eyes.

Ali’s sister Anna (Corinne Masiero),a supermarket cashier and her truck driver husband, call home a dingy, crowded cottage but she takes them in and provides some structure and care to the skittish 5-year-old. The father finds work variously as a club bouncer, night watchman, and boxer, mostly neglecting the son. Ali doesn’t think ahead to consequences — he’s a creature of the moment with somewhat mindless and muscle resistance to threats that have seen him through whatever life hurls his way.

Each of Schoenhaerts’ films has attracted interest by other actors and directors who simply want THAT — whatever it is that makes him magnetic, sympathetic, and not celebrity-like. (I think it is his evident sincerity and unshowy, modest affect.) Rust and Bone in 2012 led Carey Mulligan to want him for the part of Gabriel Oak in Far From the Madding Crowd. Since then he has done Suite Française with Michelle Williams, A Little Chaos with Kate Winslet, The Danish Girl’, and recently, Red Sparrow among other projects in a growing wave of interest in his wares. (I’d like to see him lead films rather than be a spark in the ensemble parts he has done most recently.)

The other protagonist here is Stephanie, the brilliant Marion Cotillard (Midnight in Paris and Allied are two of her English-speaking films), who plays a beautiful whale trainer at the local Marineland. She lives with a man in whom she apparently holds little interest; we meet him once before her life changes utterly.

We see her skill and confidence as an animal handler just moments before she is brutally wounded by an Orca. She wakes in the hospital to find both legs missing from above the knee, leaving her devastated, almost suicidal (being consoled by a colleague below). Cotillard is breathtaking at engaging the viewer to feel what Stephanie feels; Meryl Streep is our mistress of empathy but Cotillard pulls you in just as much, quietly without histrionics.

The story chronicles Stephanie’s gradual recovery, her reassertion of control over her body as a working woman, a sexual woman. She sets aside her awkwardness in order to have sex, and we share with her the incremental recovery of joy and self-confidence. Ali becomes enmeshed in this, beginning as an acquaintance, barely a friend. He treats his many sexual encounters as mindless events — the unemotional business of satisfying a need; he becomes Stephanie’s unromantic agent of healing.

He first takes her swimming and later suggests sex in response to her wondering aloud whether ‘everything’ still works. With her own cool, un-self-pitying urge toward self-discovery, she will not kiss him, a match for his kind but matter-of-fact indifference, but his being unperturbed that her body is broken sets in motion her emotional recovery.

One day she accompanies him to an illegal street fight, a particularly repulsive encounter that progresses until he is on the ground being slammed and bloodied by a bulkier, brawnier opponent.

Stephanie gets out of the car on her prosthetic legs and walks with half-smile and quiet certainty toward the scrum of staring male onlookers until Ali can see her; her courage and implicit support leads him to muster the will to throw off his opponent. He doesn’t realize it in the midst of the intensely physical encounter or even afterwards, but her cool assertiveness on his behalf is the precursor to his maturity into a sentient adult who will take responsibility for his actions.

While in the main we appear to be dealing with Stephanie’s recovery, in fact the changes in Ali signify even more than her repair from loss of limbs. From a muscle driven, live-for-the-moment combatant in his own life, he slowly lets Stephanie and his son occupy his mind and heart until at last he finds he desperately cannot do without them. Events proceed in which he betrays them both, and his sister, as he goes about his business ignoring the results of decisions he makes and disappointments he causes. ‘You’re being a pain’ he replies to being called on his thoughtlessness. (What woman hasn’t heard that or seen it on her man’s face and been fearful of being thought a nag.) 

Ali is worse than the typical male who acts on instinct without thinking. So it is especially satisfying to see this man understand that what he’s got to lose is worth conscious attention and change to his indifferent behavior. In the end, Ali, the woke man, the beast who chooses to be tender, is proud of Stephanie’s boldness and her sureness that disability does not means she is less. Her acceptance of his ugly boxing pastime is harder to like, but she appears to experience his physicality with vicarious pleasure given her own loss. At any rate you feel the self-confidence-building effect they have on each other; it is an in-depth dive into a relationship that is beginning to work.

Rust and Bone won almost 30 awards in France, here, and inother countries, and was nominated for about 50 more. For a grim little slice of life it is particularly affecting and memorable.

The above post was written by our 

monthly correspondent, Lee Liberman.

Li Lu's complicated love-at-first-sight tale, THERE IS A NEW WORLD SOMEWHERE

A young woman named Sylvia -- whose boss at a New York art gallery explains that her work is not good enough to be included in even a group show -- is so fed up that she quits, leaving town to attend the wedding of a friend in Austin, Texas. At the night-before party she makes eye contact with a hot-looking guy who, on this first date, invites her to come away with him. This could be the start of a movie in any number of genres, from kidnap thriller to feel-good love story. In the hands of writer/director Li Lu, however, it becomes something more complicated and interesting.

Ms Lu (shown at right), a Chinese-born filmmaker whose first full-length film this is, seems most interested in slowly developing character, and while the manner in which she does this may seem initially rather typical, if beautifully filmed, stick with THERE IS A NEW WORLD SOMEWHERE. It gets better as it goes along, and in its two attractive and talented leads, Agnes Bruckner (two photos below) and Maurice Compte (below), it boasts actors who can hold the screen and our attention well enough to hit pay dirt thoughtfully and quietly by movie's end.

A psychotherapist friend of Trust Movies once told him that any two individuals could form a lasting relationship, the only prerequisites being that the two were autonomous and that they wanted that relationship. Ms Lu's movie would seem to bear out this theory, even though our two characters here are not yet autonomous. But they're trying to be, and by movie's end they've made some growth in that direction.

The ups and down, stops and starts of that growth, as well as the small bits of information we begin to learn about Esteban, the male part of this duo, is what gives the movie its slow, quiet propulsion. The dialog ranges from simply OK to a good deal more than that. "You don't trust anyone, do you?" he asks of her early on. And this seems, unfortunately, to be true.

She also does not appear to enjoy sex all that much, though the pair has it with some frequency. (It may be that he does not know how to or care about satisfying her, but she may also not be able to be satisfied so easily.) And yet they are drawn to each other both physically and emotionally.

So "New World Somewhere" is a road trip/getting-to-know-you kind of movie -- which turns darker as more and more reality, along with the past, begins to intrude. Leaving the wedding party so suddenly was a selfish thing to do, and Sylvia will eventually cop to and pay for this. Esteban, for his part, has major abandonment issues resulting in an inability to "try."

When, at a particular moment, an early lie in the relationship is uncovered, everything seems to change. But even then, Ms Lu has more on her mind that simple closure and conclusion. There is indeed a new world somewhere. But getting on the right road to that world can take an awful lot of work.

From Emerging Pictures (in its theatrical release) and Gravitas Ventures (for its VOD release, which began this past Tuesday, August 2), the movie, running 103 minutes, is worth seeking out and wrestling with. Click here to see all further theatrical screenings. VOD platforms include iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, Playstation Store, VUDU, Amazon Video, Microsoft and Hoopla.

Clarkson, Siddig and Egypt share the screen in Ruba Nadda's lovely CAIRO TIME

How unusual to see a love story for adults, one that takes its sweet time (yes, the CAIRO TIME of the title) while it alternately surprises, soothes and shakes you up.  But quietly.  Young people will need to be awfully mature to appreciate this film, though it was made by one of them: Ruba Nadda, shown below, a Canadian writer/director with middle-eastern roots who is still in her 30s. To reap the full benefits of the film, you must be willing to enter the soul of the protagonist, a happily-married, middle-aged woman (Patricia Clarkson) arriving in Egypt for a vacation with her husband (employed by the United Nations and posted in Cairo).

Ms Clarkson is as ravishing and as reserved as I have ever seen her (and I try to see her in everything she does).  She also radiates intelligence and humor. Interestingly enough, her co-star, Alexander Siddig (from Syriana, The Nativity Story and The Last Legion) possesses all these qualities, too.  He's a gorgeous man: beautiful, bright, reticent and witty. What a pair they make, and their story, as it flows quietly along with an occasional up or down, entrances.  Mr. Siddig plays the recently-retired assistant of Clarkson's husband, the latter suddenly stuck in Palestine due to an "incident."  Siddig (shown two photos below) has been asked to squire Clarkson (shown just below) around the city and cater to her needs until hubby returns.

This set-up is certainly real enough, and the pair relate to each other in a halting but friendly manner that grows only slowly into something more.  A Hollywood version, made by folks a decade or so younger, would probably have the two people begin their relationship at odds with one another, fighting and then inevitably loving.  Get over that scenario; these are mature adults, and Cairo Time is the kind of adult movie experience you'll want to share with every smart, mature moviegoer you know.

The relationship grows in very quiet increments, and the performances could hardly be more finely calibrated.  Yet, thanks to Ms Nadda's skill and that of her actors, there's nary a moment here that seems rehearsed or overly "planned."  Sometimes, in fact, we're on tenterhooks as to what is going to happen;  in terms of this relationship and its outcome, the movie is often as suspenseful as any thriller.

The film should have you making plans to visit Egypt; it is doubtful that a better commercial for the country's travel industry has yet been made. Cairo really is a third character here, from the Nile that flows alongside Clarkson's hotel to the pyramids seen somehow differently here than I have experience them so far on film.  The marketplaces, the coffee houses, the streets (and the crossing of them!), and most especially how the men of the city react to this strawberry-blond visitor: Cairo Time is a kind of non-stop, quiet revelation.

Custom clashes, the roles of men and women, the weaving looms (above), chess (below), and more; we experience all these through the eyes of both Clarkson's character and that of Siddig's.  This makes the film richer and more complicated than a single view would have provided. In the supporting cast, only the lovely Elena Anaya (last seen here in Hierro, part of the 2009 FSLC's Spanish Cinema Now series) stands out.  But the movie belongs to Clarkson and Siddig (and to Ms Nadda).

I suspect the ending is what will separate the women from the girls (and the men from the boys -- if many males will even take a chance on this one).  I found the finale very close to perfect -- though I admit, had this tale gone another way, I would have embraced that, too.  So real and so full have these two characters become, that I think most of us would follow them anywhere.

Cairo Time opens this Friday in New York City at the IFC Center, and will be simultaneously available, as well, via IFC On-Demand.  (Though if you do not have a large, wide-screen TV, the movie theater is the way to see this one.)  Click here to determine of your area of the country has access to IFC On Demand.

TrustMovies sat in on a Roundtable with Nadda, Siddig and Clarkson, which he hopes to transcribe and have posted soon. For now, he'll just say that the three were as cultivated, quick-witted and seemingly genuine as any movie people he's so far encountered.  It was especially pleasing to find the principals of a film one has loved to be as delightful as the movie itself.