Rust and Bone (Jacques Audiard, 2012)

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#1 Post by **Jeff** » Thu Apr 12, 2012 1:52 am

French trailer for Jacques Audiard's Rust and Bone

feihong · #2 Post by **feihong** » Thu Apr 12, 2012 4:15 am

I can't decide based on this trailer and the synopsis whether this new Audiard movie is profoundly inspired or completely wayward. Something about it seems really off. Maybe it's the "wounded-person trauma, movie-of-the-week" thing. That crossed with bumfights seems so twisted, I hope it can manage to come together into something meaningful.

Zot! · #3 Post by **Zot!** » Thu Apr 12, 2012 2:15 pm

feihong wrote:I can't decide based on this trailer and the synopsis whether this new Audiard movie is profoundly inspired or completely wayward. Something about it seems really off. Maybe it's the "wounded-person trauma, movie-of-the-week" thing. That crossed with bumfights seems so twisted, I hope it can manage to come together into something meaningful.

You forgot Free Willy.

#4 Post by **Matt** » Thu Apr 12, 2012 5:18 pm

I think Audiard is at his best when he's got two characters in an unlikely relationship. The best part about De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté is Tom's relationship with his piano teacher, and of course Sur mes levres is entirely built on the relationship between Paul and Carla.

But I'm up for seeing anything he puts on screen.

j99 · #5 Post by **j99** » Fri Apr 13, 2012 8:05 pm

Just noticed Jacques Audiard has a new film out on the 17th May, and apart from the trailer, I can find very little information about it. Marion Cotillard is one of the leads, and having liked his previous two films A Prophet, and The Beat That My Heart Skipped, I have high hopes for a new Audiard film.

#6 Post by **Matt** » Fri Apr 13, 2012 8:31 pm

If you haven't seen Read My Lips (Sur mes lèvres) yet, hop to it!

MichaelB · #7 Post by **MichaelB** » Fri Apr 13, 2012 9:55 pm

I'm not sure I've seen a bad or even disappointing Audiard film - does such a thing exist?

Anyway, I certainly wouldn't prejudge his work from a trailer.

feihong · #8 Post by **feihong** » Fri Apr 13, 2012 11:42 pm

Well I didn't find A Prophet anywhere near as interesting as his previous films.

I'm just saying I'll be pleasantly surprised if this one works. The two worlds of the principal characters seem so disparate (though it is Audiard's strength to bring separate lives together in unusual ways), I wonder what kind of thematic material can bind them into a coherent whole. And the acting talent assembled for this one is significantly underpowered compared to that of any of his previous movies. I think Audiard depends on supremely coherent central performances to tie the elements of his films together, and I haven't seen Cotillard excel in that capacity.

Murdoch · #9 Post by **Murdoch** » Sat Apr 14, 2012 12:07 am

MichaelB wrote:I'm not sure I've seen a bad or even disappointing Audiard film - does such a thing exist?

A dissenting voice here. I've only seen The Beat My Heart Skipped and found it forgettable outside of the progression of the exchanges between the lead and teacher during the piano lessons. That last scene

Spoiler

where he beats (kills?) the guy in the bathroom

I found horribly contrived and while I'm not averse to seeing more of his films, I wasn't impressed by my introduction.

j99 · #10 Post by **j99** » Sat Apr 14, 2012 2:41 pm

Matt wrote:If you haven't seen Read My Lips (Sur mes lèvres) yet, hop to it!

I have seen it; I just felt A Prophet and The Beat That My Heart Skipped were better. Good film though, and I haven't seen a bad "Audiard" either.

There are two films of his I've yet to see; See How They Fall and A Self Made Hero. Anyone seen these?

Duncan Hopper · #11 Post by **Duncan Hopper** » Thu May 17, 2012 8:51 am

Early comments for Jacques Audiard's 'Rust & Bone' are not great, mixed at best.

#12 Post by **Jeff** » Thu May 17, 2012 12:53 pm

Duncan Hopper wrote:Early comments for Jacques Audiard's 'Rust & Bone' are not great, mixed at best.

I've seen tweets ranging from "contrived" to "masterpiece." It sounds like it really wears its sentimentality on its sleeve, which is a huge turnoff for some. It's awards-baity according to a few tweeters. Kevin Jagernauth at The Playlist likes it a lot, and it was the award-blogging types like David Poland and Sasha Stone who were throwing out the M-word. Mike D'Angelo and Guy Lodge were fans too.

#13 Post by **Finch** » Thu May 17, 2012 8:08 pm

The Guardian crew seemed to like it across the board though Xan Brooks considers it quite a bit inferior to A Prophet (a film I personally found worthseeing but not as great as seemingly everybody else). Peter Bradshaw's write-up is here.

Some tweets:

Dave Calhoun @davecalhoun: New Audiard film at Cannes, Rust and bone, pretty terrible and rambling in all...with some great showy moments...

Nick James @filmnickjames: Audiard's cautious romance between a woman who loses her legs and a street fighter RUST AND BONE feels too contrived #Cannes2012

#14 Post by **domino harvey** » Thu May 17, 2012 9:21 pm

The passionately divisive responses make me a lot more interested, sounds like it at least has the courage of its convictions (however rightly or wrongly TBD obv)

feihong · #15 Post by **feihong** » Fri May 18, 2012 7:00 am

Audiard makes me interested innately, but Cotillard makes me immediately wary. As long as I don't have to watch her wallowing in depression for 100+ minutes I'll try it. I love Read My Lips and The Beat My Heart Skipped, which both deal with extreme lifestyles juxtaposed in unusual ways--like the new picture--but I thought A Prophet was a movie that probably looked great on paper, but that was dull and unsurprising from the outset, never to improve upon its initial ho-humness. The Beat My Heart Skipped rambled a bit in lots of directions, and that felt totally right for the material. Maybe this one will work, too.

Sloper · #16 Post by **Sloper** » Fri May 18, 2012 8:08 am

I remember Audiard once said in an interview that he leaves long gaps between films because he finds the process of making them incredibly stressful: the pressure to get it right, the terror of messing it up. He invests so much in each project, and the results always feel 'perfectionist' in one sense, but also incredibly personal, and wary of spelling things out too nakedly.

Part of the problem with films like A Self-Made Hero, Read My Lips and A Prophet (I haven't seen his first film) is that 'on paper', so to speak, they sound like a certain kind of film: a bittersweet Oscar-begging war drama, an icy Gallic thriller, a gritty prison thriller; but I found it hard, while watching them, to see what they were really about, or to figure out what tone they were going for. Somehow they don't go in the directions you would expect, and to me it feels like this is because Audiard is trying to say something very personal, and perhaps a little obscure, through this material. I found all three of those films quite frustrating for this reason, but for the same reason I also can't wait to see them again.

The Beat that My Heart Skipped perhaps has an advantage in that the very nature of the material defies expectations. A lowlife thug wants to be a concert pianist - it almost sounds like a spoof 'arthouse' film, but in any case the title (more ambiguous in French, like the titles of some of Audiard's other films) and the premise don't allow you to make any assumptions. You just have to enter the world of the film and discover it gradually - and it definitely helps that in this case we have a painfully sympathetic and tragic central performance (from Romain Duris) to hold our attention. That's a big distinction to make between this and the other films. But I agree with feihong that here the unexpected turns of the narrative, and the outright digressions (like Tom's affair with his colleague's wife) feel absolutely appropriate and essential to the overall effect, perhaps mainly because it's hard to define from the outset what would or would not constitute a 'digression' in a film like this.

(Much the same could of course be said of Toback's Fingers, an ultraviolent '70s gangster film with an incomprehensible title featuring Harvey Keitel as a deeply un-cool, compulsively cassette-playing, latent homosexual with serious daddy issues; it's amazing that Audiard can take such a personal, uniquely brilliant film and somehow reproduce so many of its effects while making them all his own.)

So when people talk about Rust and Bone being 'contrived' or 'slushy', I wonder if this reflects confusion over the film's 'point' and 'tone'. Aspects of Read My Lips, and perhaps the ending, could seem sentimental and contrived from one point of view, but in practice it's so deeply felt, and so subtly ambivalent (the ending of The Beat that My Heart Skipped is a superlative example of the same thing) that you just feel you need to watch it again, and again, until it makes sense. It shouldn't feel organic, but it does.

Anyway, I guess the point of these ramblings is that I have no idea what to expect from Rust and Bone, despite having read some crucial spoilers (thanks again, Peter Bradshaw - when will I learn?), and I take that as a good sign...

feihong · #17 Post by **feihong** » Fri May 18, 2012 8:43 am

Great interpretation of how Audiard movies work. Like you, The Beat My Heart Skipped does stand out for me, though seeing Read My Lips also had a special intensity and an alarmingly hard edge to it, all the while portraying the modern workplace as something as deadly in nature as any criminal enterprise.

I think that the wariness about this new one on my part comes from that "perfectionist" feel you mention Audiard trying for so relentlessly. He's one of those directors to speak out on the all-important aspects of planning every aspect of a film in advance (he has in the past been decisively supportive of this method), and moving ahead from a script whose details should be as non-malleable and intractable as iron. That suggests that his strident plot premises and his rough, urgent camerawork are as preconceived and prepared as his dialogue and mis-en-scene, and that I find very disturbing. Part of the point of a handheld, rapidly-searching camera is to be able to look and search and pick out unexpected detail. It can be like a jazz soloist, imposing his will over the harmony that supports his solo. In the case of Audiard, though, the camera seems more like the bow of a classical violinist, darting to prepared and rehearsed spaces to create an exact structure. What is lost in the transition from one music scene to another, or one conception of how the camera should be used to another, is the purpose of the structure. Why does the camera dart from place to place if it knows what it will find there? The camera is not observing then so much as setting things up for us. This is just plain worrisome to me, but the effect works for Read My Lips and The Beat My Heart Skipped, because the darting, close camera gives us a tactile feel for in the first an alien world--the world of the deaf woman trying to cover up her secret handicap--and in the second for an interior, hidden world--the world of Thomas Seyr, gripped and pulled by dynamic but invisible forces in different directions. The technique doesn't work for everything, however; I don't think it brought anything too exceptional to A Prophet that a less active, more patiently observant camera style mightn't improve upon. But I'm not sure Audiard is such a natural craftsman that he can turn that style off. He certainly hasn't done so in the images I've seen from Rust and Bone, and while the film's subject seems naturally geared towards the tactile alertness of Audiard's usual camera style, I don't have huge confidence that the mixture of style and substance will once again create the same, charged reaction as it did on those two previous films. See How They Fall, I'm not really that qualified to comment on--I got bored and quit watching early in the film. It didn't seem as furiously committed to a particular viewpoint as the later films though--and surely that commitment is what makes the later films so exciting.

I just don't feel like it's guaranteed to work. Audiard claims to shoot in a way Hitchcock used to shoot--and to me Hitch's oeuvre is stuffed with films of highly debatable merit and artistic success, as well as important masterpieces of cinema. The rigid preparation and preconception seems to me either to work completely or hardly at all, and I wish there was more room in Audiard for the unexpected; the jazzy; the free. If the perceived freedom of Audiard's active camera style is always to be a cheat or an illusion, then not only must the camera style fit the subject matter of the film precisely, but ever other important aspect of the film must be firing on all cylinders, as well. Audiard is not loose enough to deal with doubt in that regard. So the arrival of this movie makes me more apprehensive than eager. But I hope you are right, Sloper, and that the early reviews are a good sign. Still, I can't help thinking that early review of A Prophet were fantastic, also, and so my apprehension isn't ameliorated.

Sloper · #18 Post by **Sloper** » Fri May 18, 2012 10:01 pm

feihong wrote:Why does the camera dart from place to place if it knows what it will find there? The camera is not observing then so much as setting things up for us. This is just plain worrisome to me, but the effect works for Read My Lips and The Beat My Heart Skipped, because the darting, close camera gives us a tactile feel for in the first an alien world--the world of the deaf woman trying to cover up her secret handicap--and in the second for an interior, hidden world--the world of Thomas Seyr, gripped and pulled by dynamic but invisible forces in different directions. The technique doesn't work for everything, however; I don't think it brought anything too exceptional to A Prophet that a less active, more patiently observant camera style mightn't improve upon.

I hadn't quite put my finger on it before, but I think that describes quite well one of the big problems I had with A Prophet - the shooting style seemed artificial and affected this time, and contributed to the 'portentous' feel that pervades much of the film. I can remember the same techniques being used brilliantly, and very naturally, in The Beat; some moments towards the end spring to mind, especially Tom's climactic visit to his dad's flat, and the final, perfectly timed confrontation with Minskov.

I need to watch A Prophet again, but at the moment I think you might be right that a slightly more 'patient' approach would have worked better. The sort of quasi-iris-effect (when most of the lens is blocked, so that we seem to be peering at things through half-closed eyelids), which Audiard used sparingly in The Beat that My Heart Skipped, also seemed a bit too prevalent in A Prophet.

Sloper · #19 Post by **Sloper** » Tue May 29, 2012 3:21 pm

feihong wrote:See How They Fall, I'm not really that qualified to comment on--I got bored and quit watching early in the film. It didn't seem as furiously committed to a particular viewpoint as the later films though--and surely that commitment is what makes the later films so exciting.

I've just seen it and would strongly recommend giving it another shot: it's a masterpiece. As always with Audiard, it's best to go into this with no expectations: the English title, and the Optimum DVD cover would lead you to expect a cool, ironic thriller about criminals turning upon each other, and the plot synopsis sounds like another 'ordinary stiff spirals into life of crime' affair - but after seeing the film, you realise that the image of Mathieu Kassovitz on the DVD cover has wholly unexpected, and quite tragic, connotations. And as is often the case with Audiard, the French title - Regarde les Hommes Tomber - seems much truer to what the film is about.

In fact this is an immensely moving, complex and profound film about three people trying to find an identity for themselves, in this case through very intense same-sex relationships. It's interesting that Audiard pretty much excised the homosexual sub-text from Fingers when he adapted it into The Beat that My Heart Skipped, because his first film and A Prophet are both very deeply concerned with the connections between different kinds of homosocial bonds (if you want to call them that). In See How They Fall, the latent homosexuality of all three main characters gradually emerges as the central theme, except that it's so subtly handled that even calling it 'latent homosexuality' feels reductive. Suffice it to say that it is every bit as searching and sensitive in its exploration of human nature as Audiard's later films. If I had time I'd watch it again right now.

I also re-watched A Prophet a few days ago, and enjoyed it a lot more this time. The frequent 'iris shot' effects I mentioned before made a lot more sense to me: they obviously evoke the point of view of someone in a very dark place seeing light break in through a small hole or crack, or in between bars, which not only relates to the setting of the film, but also highlights a theme that runs through all Audiard's work. In a way, I think the abiding theme of his work is 'survival', but not in any material sense - he's fascinated by characters who find themselves in an intolerable situation of some kind, but one that everyone around them seems to take for granted. The protagonist then catches a small glimpse of an opportunity, something that might represent light at the end of the tunnel, and they cling to it tenaciously, pursuing the opportunity until they get what they want, or rather what they need.

I think what some people find frustrating about these films, and what has hindered me from getting to grips with some of them, is that it takes time and patience to figure out exactly what the characters are pursuing. Why does Simon need to find the men who shot his friend? It isn't out of a desire for revenge, or a deep affection for the friend - the pleasure of See How they Fall is in trying to figure out what drives this man and the two men he's pursuing. The same goes for Thomas Seyr - just what does 'being a concert pianist' represent for him, and since this goal is unattainable is he really looking for something else? Like a few others on this board, I thought Malik's motivations in A Prophet seemed pretty basic, but watching it again I feel stupid for thinking that. It could have been a simple revenge story, and revenge certainly plays its part in what Malik does, but there are so many more layers as well.

What's really wonderful is that while these films are not too lazy to answer the questions they raise, they do so in a way that is never simplistic, sentimental or hackneyed, and this makes them infinitely re-watchable.

j99 · #20 Post by **j99** » Fri Nov 02, 2012 2:47 pm

feihong wrote:Audiard makes me interested innately, but Cotillard makes me immediately wary. As long as I don't have to watch her wallowing in depression for 100+ minutes I'll try it.

Well she does her fair share of wallowing but she's entitled to in this one considering her circumstances. I thought it was excellent; Audiard never disappoints me, at least from Read My Lips onwards, and a worthy follow up to A Prophet. It also has a fairly stunning soundtrack; even Katy Perry's Fireworks sounds good, although I don't believe for a moment John Cooper Clarke's Evidently Chickentown was on his iPod! I am intrigued as to how they managed convincingly to portray Cotillard as an amputee. Was it a combination of prosthetics and a body double?

tavernier · #21 Post by **tavernier** » Fri Nov 02, 2012 4:26 pm

j99 wrote:even Katy Perry's Fireworks sounds good

I doubt even Audiard can perform miracles

jbeall · #22 Post by **jbeall** » Fri Nov 23, 2012 1:22 pm

salon.com review

puxzkkx · #23 Post by **puxzkkx** » Fri Nov 23, 2012 8:37 pm

This is just absolute silliness. Schoenaerts and Cotillard deserve props for their intense commitment to the physical aspects of their characters, and their intensity in playing vaguely-written emotions, but the characters just aren't there. It's action (Alain) or reaction (Stéphanie) with no detail and no motivation.

Audiard takes on two big challenges in directing minutely choreographed MMA fights and unsimulated orca training scenes. And the visual effects are almost seamless. But this is just a silly, silly movie, a year's worth of bizarre soap opera plot twists crammed into 2 hours. I guess it would be an interesting and admirable mission to develop a purely melodramatic premise and treat it with a realism that legitimises far-fetched character concerns (which is something that a contemporary like, say, Lee Chang-dong does all the time and does well), but the problem here is that Audiard's finished product, with all its stylised 'grit', is still unbearably Tumblr-romantic in its self-consciously 'ironic' use of pop music, sun-dappled imagery and constant fades to black. By the end the plot contrivances have reached drinking-game levels of ridiculousness. A shame because it looks good and has two actors who were clearly game for making screenwriter flights of fancy into real people.

Grand Illusion · #24 Post by **Grand Illusion** » Mon Dec 10, 2012 6:22 am

I would like to re-title this film as Pretty Girls Fall For Asshole Meatheads: The Movie. Granted, there are some poetic visuals and a captivating performance by Cotillard, but they work to prove the central thesis that being good-looking and having muscles is the most important thing in the world. Now, that may be a truism, but I'm uncertain if I needed a film to remind me of it.

Ultimately, what you have here is a character study of a completely irredeemable prick. Here's a man who is complete id. He eats, fucks, and fights, without empathy or thoughts for anyone but himself. That's a fine premise. The problem is that Audiard picks a side and pushes hard. The writing gets behind the flawed protagonist so much that every other person this character sins against forgives him for no discernable reason.

I'm not saying that the film needs to be a finger-wagging moralistic fable, but there's an issue when every other characters' motivations are forced to serve the faux redemptive journey for the male lead. You can look to Aronofsky's far-superior The Wrestler as a film that took this type of character to its logical conclusion.

In Rust and Bone, you have a character that:

Spoiler

beats his son; throws the kid against a sharp countertop; sets up an illegal spying ring that costs his sister his job; threatens to beat up a woman that takes pictures of him; threatens to beat up his sister; completely disses Cotillard's character after having sex with her to go fuck some other girl; ditches everyone to run away with no responsibility; and of course almost gets his kid killed by neglect. Even the way he is filmed in sex scenes with other women (not Cotillard) is violent and unloving.

But at the end of the film, every character forgives the protagonist and his fighting career blossoms unexpectedly in an unearned coda that completely redeems the character and puts him back with everyone he abandoned. Then comes a voiceover (first time used in the film) with metaphoric imagery from our previously-monosyllabic meathead.

It's a shame because there are so many interesting avenues this could've gone (such as the brief episode where Cotillard becomes the ringleader of the underground fight club), but the film forces an invalid redemption. I really enjoyed Audiard's previous three films, but this is a swing-and-a-miss for me.

#25 Post by **Matt** » Sun Jan 06, 2013 1:04 am

tavernier wrote:
j99 wrote:even Katy Perry's Fireworks sounds good
I doubt even Audiard can perform miracles

I didn't believe it either, yet I found myself tearing up when the song makes a reprise halfway through the film.

I have to strongly disagree with the previous two posters. I absolutely loved this film. Everything worked for me. I rarely knew what was coming next, despite setups that, in the wrong hands, would be eye-rollingly melodramatic. I felt it was a big improvement over Un Prophet, a welcome return to form for Audiard.

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