On Violence Begetting Violence with Rust and Bone

De rouille et d'os (Rust and Bone) is Jacques Audiard’s follow up to the fantastic A Prophet (2009). The latter achieved what it set out to do with perfection, combining style with substance and creating a masterpiece of the crime/prison genre. Rust and Bone does not replicate this achievement, which may be the result of it being a combination of two short stories and therefore feeling more episodic. 

However, it is incredibly well acted and at times as stylish, brutal and powerful as A Prophet was. 

A Prophet was a film that did not shy away from violence and used it often to force the audience to face the realities of the protagonist’s incarceration. It is interesting to look at Rust and Bone from the point of its violent interactions, which ultimately propel the film forward and, as A Prophet did, forces an audience to face uncomfortable realities about characters they have engaged with.

Matthias Schoenaerts’ Alain is inherently violent; he treats his young son with the temperament of a man with a short fuse; he is drawn to jobs that require confrontation and attempts to make it as a professional mixed martial arts fighter. This is a man who lives with violence, even if he is not explicitly violent that often. Marion Cottillard’ s Stephanie, a trainer of killer whales is a woman who has violence done to her. While putting on a SeaWorld show she is attacked by one of the whales and loses her legs. This act of blameless violence draws her into the arms (literally as he carries her) to Alain. The violence done to Stephanie begets, to a greater degree, Alain’s own violence as she encourages and inspires his illegal mixed martial arts fighting. Yet, Stephanie is a woman coming to terms with violence, she is not a home with it and ultimately Alain’s treatment of her and others drives them apart.

It is only an act of self harm – violence unto himself – that allows Alain to develop as a person. Here Audiard, while looking at (often glamorously) violence, may be making the point that only when violent people turn their brutality inwards and accept it can they develop.

Rust and Bone can feel contrived. Yet it is at times beautiful and challenging cinema. The scene where Alain and Stephanie walk into a illegal fighting ring, with the sun setting behind them to Springsteen’s State Trooper is as memorable as anything this year.