(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
16 November
* Contains spoilers *
I cannot, try to think of it kindly as I may (now that I have seen the film), believe that the title of Rust and Bone (2012) was the best that anyone had the wits to come up with from the original French title, De rouille et d'os, itself a shortening of Un goût de rouille et d'os, which is what the film credits as the title of the book.
That said, although Craig Davidson may have written originally in French (since he is Canadian), perhaps the title is from the English after all... At any rate, it is that of a collection of short stories, seemingly brought out to tie in with the film, although information seems a little hard to come by. (In French editions, there appears to be one in May with the full title, which names Anne Wicke alongside Davidson, and then one with the abbreviated title in July and no mention of her.)
The title isn't a massive - or any? - reason to be put off the film, but it is - as Ali is - a bit brusque (and does, say, as with The Woman in the Fifth, set up certain expectations): what about, rather than suggesting Monte Carlo or Bust! or Steptoe and Son, Of bone and of rust?
There are those who would criticize Untouchable (2012) (Intouchable) for being 'a buddy movie' between unlikely bedfellows, and find cliché in it - for all that Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) accepts Stéphanie (Marion Cotillard) for who she is, he still tells her, on first meeting, that she is dressed like a whore, unthinkingly says to her (as he says to everyone) 'Ça va?' (although he knows that she has lost her legs, because he saw it on the news), and treats her - although she is, as the phrase has it, all thumbs - as though being an amputee makes her incapable of making him a coffee. All this is the territory of Driss with Philippe, who, though having arms and legs, cannot use them. End of polemic (sort of)...
With this film (perhaps because I learnt that the origins are in stories, but I thought this at the time), I find myself thinking that there is bittiness about it: there could be one story about a boy and playing with the dogs kept for breeders; there could be another about a woman who enters 'the man's world' of hustling bids for illegal fights (used, in the film, to give a moment of hutzpah and light relief), partly because she gets a thrill from seeing the man with whom she sleeps risk getting beaten up; a third about the antics of a man paid by managers of stores to instal cameras to catch out their staff.
Now, I'm not saying that it was put together that way, but where does this film really cohere in any better way than Driss becoming the best chum to Philippe that he has ever had and vice versa? It is, apart from the gender meaning that Ali and Stéphanie can have sex, not really much of a love story - Ali's dissatisfaction about how his son has been treated has taken him to be with his sister, whom he has not seen for five years, and away from his son's mother, and the business with the cameras gets her fired and him off the scene. (Off the scene, but not - one notcies - around to Stéphanie's flat.)
Both films sort of come together at the end, though with less extensive need for trickery to give Cotillard stumps, when one admits to valuing the other (which Ali had not done, when he went off to Strasbourg - or wherever it is), but plenty of things rang false in the meantime :
* A patient who had had her legs amputated being left to wake up alone and find out what had happened to her;
* She would once, and only on impulse, try to grab a scalpel in despair;
* When, with her sister, she thins out clothes that she thinks that she no longer needs, she would not have been told already what prosthetics could do for her (which information, at the point of her despair, would have lessened it, if not the understandable tendency to depression); and
* Cotillard is not so much left unmade-up, as made down, so that, later, with make-up and her killer smile she can shine the triumph of her process.
And now to a Tweet, relating to Schoenaerts :
For those who saw Bullhead (2011), I think that there will be inevitable comparisons - beyond the male lead - between Rust and Bone and it.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 15, 2012
Nothing wrong with that, except - they used to call it typecasting - that he seems drawn to the same type of character, only doing a lot more here, because the script permitted it. (Here is my review of Bullhead, for those interested.)
In that connection of boxing, body-building and fighting, this is an interesting insight into Davidson from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Davidson :
Davidson also released a novel in 2007 named The Fighter. During the course of his research of the novel, Davidson went on a 16 week steroid cycle. To promote the release of the novel, Davidson participated in a fully sanctioned boxing match against Toronto poet Michael Knox at Florida Jack's Boxing Gym. Davidson was subsequently defeated in the match.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
