Emotionally complex, Rust and Bone often wanders off course

For the first 90 minutes, Rust and Bone is stereotypical art house fare. The French-Belgian film centers on Stephanie (Marion Cotillard), a whale trainer who has both legs cut off in a terrible accident. We see her hit rock bottom and contemplate suicide as she struggles to come to terms with her situation. But Rust and Bone has a trick up its sleeve.

Stephanie undergoes a transformation when she meets Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts), a brute of a man who works as a security guard but leads a double life as a street fighter. He could give two shits about her lack of legs and she likes that about him. But he also screws anything that moves and she’s not so happy about that. One night when he picks up some bimbo at a bar, they nearly break up. But the conflict only makes Stephanie stronger. She tells him he needs to be more “considerate,” and she agrees to start managing his fight club career when his manager is forced to leave town.

In one fell swoop, Stephanie becomes some kind of badass, buying an SUV and getting a tattoo (as a nice touch, Springsteen’s “Mr. State Trooper” plays as part of the film’s soundtrack). This movie is certainly flawed and often difficult to watch. Some of the artier cinematography feels forced and clashes with the realistic narrative and the camera never cuts from the violence, no matter how brutal. (In fact, Rust and Bone is often as discomforting as a Lars Von Trier flick).

But Cotillard is a real marvel as she inhabits her character so completely, you forget she’s acting. Her accomplishment comes not from portraying a character with a physical challenge but from the way she handles Stephanie’s emotional complexities with such dexterity. And Schoenaerts is terrific as Ali, a guy who hits first and asks questions later. Ali is just as emotionally complex (and damaged) as Stephanie, and Schoenaerts certainly brings that out. While the film doesn’t sustain the intensity of Jacques Audiard’s previous film, 2009’s epic A Prophet, it still has terrific moments, even if, as many others have noted, it tends to wander off course.