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Nov 23, 2012 Issue #43 - Animal Collective By John Oursler

Ambivalence is rarely a response a director would hope to elicit, but that is the sum effect of Rust and Bone, Jacques Audiard’s follow-up to the sensational A Prophet. The film follows the evolving relationship of Stephanie (Marion Cotillard), an Orca whale trainer, and Ali (Bullhead‘s Matthias Schoenaerts), a woefully down-on-his-luck deadbeat dad and struggling amateur boxer. The two form an impromptu friendship wherein each suffers a debilitating injury that results from their profession. Audiard directs with a heavy and at times arbitrary hand as he attempts to weave two dissonant stories together into one tale of redemption, with only varying degrees of success.

Ultimately, the problem is that the plot is ghastly implausible and the characters are mostly unlikeable and uninteresting. At various points, triumph teeters within grasp for each, but by that point there is little reason to root for their redemption. Though both give top-notch performances, Cotillard and Schoenaerts cannot resolve the film’s struggle to combine its seemingly random elements into one cohesive and effective package.

(www.sonyclassics.com/rustandbone)

Author rating: 5/10