When ‘redemption’ movies fail, it is usually because they lack the conviction to sacrifice a protagonist’s short-term likability in favour of a distant pay-off. Luckily, Rust and Bone admirably avoids this flaw. Jacques Audiard’s follow-up to critical smash A Prophet follows Ali (Matthias Schoenarts), a part-time brawler and full-time absentee parent, beginning a new life in Southern France.
Physically intimidating and emotionally inscrutable, Ali shatters everything he touches until a chance meeting with Marion Cotillard’s Stephanie. Though their relationship evolves in some unexpected (and some more predictable) ways, it is to both Audiard and Schoenarts’ credit that they are willing to hinge their story on an unapologetic lowlife character. It shows an audacity that infects so much of the film. Cotillard’s character, a killer whale trainer, introduces Rust and Bone’s unique selling point.
Cotillard is dealt a life-altering injury early on and spends the running time adjusting to both this and Ali’s incendiary presence. Although its marketing hinted at gratuitousness, the film is in fact a very honest take on the often simply tedious process of recovery. The effects used to simulate this are simply astonishing.
Elsewhere, Audiard’s eye for Antibe’s bleached-out days and seedy, halogen-soaked nights give the film a strange and uncomfortable beauty. Especially during the whale scenes, it is impossible not to be mesmerized by the vividness of his palette and scoring.
The film is not without its failings, however. By the third act, the script devolves slightly into unlikely coincidences and manipulative melodrama. One gasp-worthy scene in particular felt more like a cheap thrill than a satisfying emotional resolution.
Yet the film’s subtle successes outshine these blunders. I loved that Audiard underplays the parallels between Ali and Stephanie’s whales; after all, they are both hulking beasts, majestic in their own environment, but nonetheless capable of abject and mindless destruction.

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