Rust and Bone film review

A knockout of a film.  10/10.  Rust and Bone delivers outstanding originality in its subject matter, its narrative arc and its visual style.  I enjoy a film that keeps me guessing.  And in this case, I was on the edge of my seat throughout as even the most mundane scenarios were given surprising weight and handled with supreme delicacy by stars Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts.  Oh Schoenaerts.  His name may seem difficult to pronounce now, but we'll all know it before long.  It takes a bright star to maintain shininess beside Cotillard, and this guy is equal to the task.  He is very shiny indeed.

The great skill of this film is to endear the viewer so surely to characters of such low social standing.  It does not do so in the way that Wes Anderson or Guy Ritchie might, but rather lures us in with the artlessness of those striving to inch forward to a step and half ahead of death, but not at the expense of enjoying every moment.  There's a brutal honesty to these lives that beguiles.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the film's style is that it repeatedly shies away from showing key events, and instead focuses on the emotional fallout relating to them.  I have seen this technique attempted before, without success.  The danger can be that the viewer loses emotional attachment without seeing a character's struggle/victory.  The reason it works in this case is that the struggles/victories associated with life changing events are in what happens after.  And without getting bogged down by the details of physical struggle, more time is afforded to focus on the emotional struggles.

I find this tremendously rewarding to watch, as I imagine our actors did to enact.  The material is profoundly rich.

I don't want to give anything else away, but I wish everybody would see this film.  The only possible thing that could have enriched the experience for me is if the film had been named The Streetfighter and the Cyborg.  I imagine that it's only a matter of time before we have an English-language adaptation that does just that for the American market.

See this film if you can handle subtitles and want to discover a brand new talent in Matthias Schoenaerts.  Be prepared for something mighty.  Allow yourself time afterwards to ponder the bigger questions in life.