3 – Rust & Bone
A travelling homeless man named Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) arrives in Antibes, the south of France, to look for work to support himself and his son Sam (Armand Verdure). Crashing at his sister Anna’s (Corrine Masiero) place he secures temporary work as a bouncer at a local nightclub, where he rescues Stephanie (Marion Cotillard), an orca trainer, from a drunken fight. At the local tourist marine park, Stephanie is involved in an accident, resulting in the loss of her legs. With nowhere else to turn, she calls Ali, and the two forge an unconventional relationship.
The film’s trajectory has markedly distinct parallels to Read My Lips; the female finds it difficult to accept her disability, but through the primary male in her life she learns to do so. This newfound male in the female’s life is selfish, is ill-equipped to deal with a conventional job and instead seeks financial and personal reward through high-risk criminal ventures. As the two leads bond, it is her disability that gives his criminal endeavours a new scope. And in the film’s epilogue their relationship is strong, yet ambiguous.
This film proves rehashing isn’t always a bad idea; those above mentioned points are delivered with a greater sense of nuance here, and are experimented with a greater pay-off. For example, as Ali sinks deeper into the lure of high-risk and high-reward bare-knuckle boxing, Stephanie adopts the role as his manager, despite being told by Ali’s former manager ‘No women allowed.’ This is because her prosthetic legs and walking cane gives her a seemingly menacing aura that other fighters daren’t mess with. Whereas Carla’s lip-reading service was utilised literally for Paul’s gain, Stephanie’s is indirect but pronounced.
Rust & Bone is more than a rehashing. The bond between its two unlikely protagonists, for there is nothing on the film’s surface to explain this connection. It is nonetheless conveyed brilliantly, and naturally, through the performances of its two leads. Matthias Schoenaerts and Marion Cotillard capture the sexual tension between the two, as well as a genuine tenderness. In the first post-op scene between Stephanie and Ali, when Stephanie calls Ali over to her makeshift apartment, they move around the space awkwardly, yet remain physically close to each other’s proximity. In short, through restrained performance and particular staging, the two can convey everything about their character with very little explicitly said.
This is indeed a unique and unconventional love story of two unlikely people, with seemingly nothing in common, forming an intangible bond. Audiard’s succinct approach to dramatic changes in the plot, and the performers’ equally complex display –Cotillard expresses shock, confusion, and pain during Stephanie’s awakening scene in the hospital, and discovering her lower legs have been surgically removed – makes this a mature, and engaging romantic drama.
2 – A Self-Made Hero
To summarise this film, think Catch Me If You Can with a dim-witted conman. Albert Dehousse (Mathieu Kassovitz) leads a mundane, bourgeoisie lifestyle during the interwar years of France. Grown up hearing mythic stories of his late father’s time in the Great War from his mother (Daniele Lebrun), Albert wishes to become a hero himself. However, once WWII gets underway, and France is under the German Occupation, he is not drafted. Undeterred, he leaves his wife Yvette (Sandrine Kiberlain), the daughter of a resistance fighter, to head for Paris to carve out his own heroic tales.
This film is Audiard’s most playful to date, both tonally and formally. In blurring the lines between legend and reality, Audiard splices Albert’s pursuit for glory with scenes of retrospective talking-head faux-documentary, as certain characters recall their encounters and escapades with Albert. By portraying this subject in a playful manner, the traumatic experience of French civilians under Nazi German Occupation, and the horrors of the Resistance embattling against spies on either side of war, audiences can enjoy Albert’s escapades. Moreover, his inquisitive nature is akin to a child-like naiveté, and marks him out as an innocent dreamer in this hostile milieu. The film doesn’t shy away from the war, mind you. In fact, there are moments where Albert’s deception places him in a position of authority and he has to make some very hard decisions. These fleeting moments reminds the audience that the terrors of war are still lurking in the background, and they sometimes come to the fore.
Formally, in addition to the aforementioned faux-documentary scenes, Audiard deploys light-humorist moments, and jarring expressive moments. In a sped-up sequence, the young Albert is in a nondescript darkened room, looking to the audience, and is performing a sports montage in his underwear. The voice over narrator, later to be revealed the off-screen interviewee, describes Albert’s early fascination with exploration, and its misguided appreciation: “He learned new exotic names; like Hitler and Mussolini.”
This film marks a greater discipline in Audiard’s filmmaking; it’s a more focused narrative, the title cards deployed only to introduce names (something he’d repeat in A Prophet, and markedly more restrained than See How They Fall), and he’s formally and tonally experimenting without being at the detriment of the narrative. It is also his lightest and most accessible film to date with subversive humour abound, this is an odd, joyous moment in Audiard’s filmmaking career.
1 – A Prophet
This was the film that brought Jacques Audiard to a wider and more mainstream audience, and it’s easy to see why. 19-year-old Malik El Djebena (Tahar Rahim) is being transferred from a youth detention centre to a prison, where he will serve six years for assaulting an officer. This illiterate delinquent attracts much attention from Corsican mobsters and their leader Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup), who use his Algerian heritage to their advantage; notably, in taking out certain Muslim inmates. Through Malik’s time, he will rise to earn respect, fear, and financial profit from his time in incarceration, as well as attract a few enemies.
Unlike the overly dense narrative of his prior outing The Beat That My Heart Skipped, this film shows great discipline in keeping the story focused on Malik. In focusing the narratives trajectory onto a singular character, the audience can see an organic evolution of this character, and the difference in interactions with the different characters. In other words, how Cesar and the Corsican’s treated him when he first arrived is vastly different to the treatment felt by new(er) inmates towards the end of his incarceration. Further, as Malik’s wealth increases, so do the perks; his cell is soon fitted with its own TV/DVD-combo, and the guards allow him personal visitations from prostitutes.
Inexperienced actor Tahar Rahim brings an improvised aura to his character; one that focuses on survival and defence in the short-term. This lack of foresight in his character gives the aforementioned trajectory much uncertainty – where will Malik take himself? Or where will be allowed to be taken? Along his unpredictable journey he encounters many other pushers and aggressors that populate this malevolent underworld. It becomes readily apparent that allegiances are seldom secure, and one’s role is always influx.
The use of on-screen text brings a literary quality to the film’s form. Names are projected onto the screen to allow the film, and by proxy its audience, to bypass clunky exposition for character introduction, as well as to highlight the particular character that will be of the main focus in the ensuing chapter (a motif not used since A Self-Made Hero). This also ensures its audience won’t be loss given the abundance of characters populating this world.
Throw in some slow-motion poetic violence for good measure, and you’ve got Jacques Audiard’s best film to date. This is the film that was used to market the auteur’s later films, as well as re-releases of prior ones, and understandably so. It has the hallmarks of the auteur, a soundtrack that blends popular music with a classical underscore, and a lead that evolves on-screen.
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