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For a solid 2/3 of its running time, Rust and Bone is a fractured and painful story of two desperate people coming together. It’s not until the final twenty minutes or so that it seems to fly off with no regards on how to actually end it, but all of that can be forgiven when you realize how delicate and wonderful the two central performances are.
The central love story takes on a strange permutation of “Beauty & the Beast,” although which of the two is the beauty and the beast depends on what moment we are currently experiencing. Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) is a soulful but damaged brute who is stuck raising his son and training to become an MMA fighter. His character knows little outside of brutality and coarseness. Stephanie (Marion Cotillard) is a sensual woman who works in a Sea World-like water park training orcas and making them do tricks for politely awed families and tourists. They meet as a chance encounter before the accident that takes away her legs, and eventually reconnect after it occurs.
Thus begins a complicated and bleak entanglement which resembles some kind of love story, but not necessarily a happy one. He is a wild he-man who needs someone to tame him and rope him in, and she’s someone who is experienced in training and domesticizing wild animals. He is the beast to her beauty, but in a way she is also the beast to his beauty. After losing the accident, Stephanie shuts down from the world. Her ache and bed-ridden depression seem incredibly realistic for someone who has survived a horrific accident and come away a double amputee. This he-man reawakens her to the outside world and also provides a sexual reawakening.
Much of their early relationship involves them acting as little more than friends and fuck buddies. Their sex scenes are more like animalistic lust and need than passion and love. But as they slowly begin to depend on one another, it grows into something more…stable isn’t the word, because it’s definitely not that at this point. Rust and Bone could have easily dipped into exploitative soap opera territory, but the emotional distance from so much of the action prevents that. As do the two central performances which anchor the film, as best they can, in reality.
Marion Cotillard continues to carve out a fascinating and rewarding post-Oscar career for herself. Even if her projects don’t turn out fantastic, Nine, she’s the best thing about them. And here she’s allowed to plum emotional depths and create a quietly poetic marvel of a performance. The scene where she reenacts her hand gestures and the visual cues that she employed in her orca show on the roof of her apartment is a tiny wonder as she brings layers without saying a single word. And the scene where she goes to the aquarium to visit the animals, and through the glass has it perform a few simple tricks broke my heart, and she did it all through her body language.
Matthias Schoenaerts matches her every step of the way. He way get the “showier” role, but he brings something of a young Brando’s energy, physicality and soul-searching to the role. His character is all muscle, sex and carnage, yet lurking underneath is a man searching for someone to tame in. His animal looking for a master is solidly done work. And in a more just cinematic universe he would have gotten some awards love along with Cotillard. They’re both just that good.
The problem with Rust and Bone occurs when the narrative switches from the two of them examining their physical and psychological hurts to an accident involving Ali’s son. This is the act that is setup to tie up the various plot strands and give us our ending, but it blows by so quickly that it made me think the writers didn’t know how to end the story and just dashed something off. The final shot of the happy nuclear family walking off into the sunset feels tonally different and at odds with the rest of the story which showcases the stages of denial, grief and anger that occur when something traumatic happens to us.
