Rust and Bone

'A Prophet' writer-director Jacques Audiard returns with a romantic drama that doesn't have the same power that his Oscar-nominated prison movie boasted. However, Cotillard and Schoenaerts, playing characters you don't normally see in a romantic movie, cook up a storm.

Boorish kick boxer Alain (Schoenaerts) rescues his five-year-old son Sam (Verdure) from his errant mother and heads south to Antibes where they move in with Alain's sister. Clueless in the ways of fatherhood, Alain leaves Sam's rearing to his sister and throws himself into job-hunting, which results in a nightclub bouncer gig. It's here he breaks up a fight involving orca trainer Stéphanie (Cotillard) and he drives her home. Nothing more comes of it until Stéphanie loses both her legs in a work accident and, in a decision she can't quite fathom herself, picks up the phone and asks the muscular Alain for help…

The relationship is the heart and soul of the story and Rust & Bone's success lies solely on buying into them as a couple. It's a difficult one to get on board with, though. Why Stéphanie would pick up the phone and call not a family member or a friend but a man she met once (and was quite sexist to her) is questionable, and it's left to the viewer to search for the answers when they should be following the story. Maybe she's looking for the same strength that Alain had when he made her boyfriend shrink with a withering look. Maybe she needs to absorb his physical power: when with him in a nightclub she has the confidence to display her artificial legs but when he dances with another girl, she hides them away again.

She does the same for him too. Alain is forced into bare-knuckle boxing to make ends meet and, in a rather on-the-nose moment when he’s losing, the sight of her artificial legs gives him the muscle power needed to win. What she has to do with him accepting the responsibility in raising his boy is less clear, however.

Despite some nice moments between the two leads and a final sequence that will stay in the memory, Rust & Bone just doesn't hang together like it should.