Not a review. I repeat: Not a review. I’ve been writing this, a paragraph at a time, for over 2 months. It’s more like one of my SPN re-caps, where I go scene by scene exploring story and character analysis. It occurred to me as I did this that this was how I used to work when I worked as an actress. Dreaming into every moment, from every possible side, considering backstory and motivations, paying attention what is NOT said just as much as what IS said. I love to riff like this and nobody would ever pay me to write a piece of this length, but I’ve been wanting to write about Rust and Bone – in this way – since it first came out, because I am obsessed. In other words, yes. I know this is long. And I know that “long”, in this case, is an understatement.

Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts) and Stephanie (Marion Cotillard), the two lead characters in Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone, both do one thing in their lives really well, better than most, and in every other area, they do almost nothing well. They’re both highly compartmentalized people. Ali has one overriding goal and passion, and he devotes himself to it, but otherwise he can’t think even two steps down the road. His life may be more openly a mess than hers, but what we see of her life before everything happens is pretty bleak as well. Stephanie is already doing what she wants to do in life, and she does it really well, but outside of that one arena of expertise, her life is chaos.

Rust and Bone was one of the best films of 2012. Roger Ebert wrote in his review that he would add it to his Great Movies list, but never got around to it, due to his illness at the time. Audiard said that as he approached this material, telling two separate stories for almost half of the film, he realized that neither character was the protagonist: “The protagonist of the story is the love story. The love story is the hero.” He is so successful at bringing that across that Rust and Bone has one of the most meaningful – if not the most meaningful (off the top of my head I can’t think of another one) – “I love you”s in any movie I have ever seen. When I saw it in the theatre, and heard those words, I actually burst into tears. What the hell. This is not my style. Hats off.

Rust and Bone is one of the most purely emotional love stories of the last 20 years. Longer. Ever. If you described the plot (as I am about to do, at LENGTH), it might sound like some Nicholas Sparks shit. But Rust and Bone, is raw, and – and this is the key – even though it’s a love story it acknowledges that some damage is never undone. Love does not cure all. Love is an amazing miracle in Rust and Bone – a life-saver – but it does not cure all. The sex scenes in Rust and Bone surge with palpable emotion (not just lust: all KINDS of feelings churn around as is true with sex in real-life, but so often not shown onscreen). The act of sex can CREATE love. And nobody is more surprised by that than the two characters participating in said sex.

Rust and Bone is a contemporary story told in the old-fashioned style of melodrama. Melodrama is so out of style that critics and audiences sometimes don’t know what to do with it, and call it “sentimental” or “weepy” or – without even realizing that they are being accurate as opposed to critical – “melodramatic”. This happened when Rust and Bone premiered at Cannes. The opinion was split. Many loved it. But many others thought it was too “obvious”, etc.. I spoke recently about what classic melodrama could actually do, better than other genres, in my review of Ira Sachs’ beautiful Little Men:

Melodrama for some reason has a bad reputation, seeming to suggest soap operas or three-hanky weepers, but melodrama has always been one of the most effective genres for social and economic criticism because down on the ground things really are that important. There is nothing melodramatic about losing one’s home and livelihood. It’s life and death to the people involved.

The obviously presented (Audiard does not try to be subtle) mirroring and repeating thematic symbols in Rust and Bone – physical trauma, sunlight, panes of glass, and water – work in the way symbols do in good literary fiction. In Rust and Bone you can’t get away from them, they’re in every visual. The story is about going from darkness into light. From the womb into self-hood. From cold into warmth. Or from warmth into cold. Plunging to the surface from underwater, or plunging underwater from the surface. Water when frozen turns to ice. The first scene between the two characters involves ice, and one of the final scenes also involves ice. One of the first things he says to her is, “Breathe.” Come to the surface, come up for air.

In melodrama, human emotion is the most important thing.

I want to talk about the film but I should say before moving forward, since much of the movie depends on not knowing much going in (at least that was the case with me. It’s hard, but I try to avoid pre-release publicity):

All the Spoilers Following

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