Risking tender love

French director strips romance of sentimentalism, writes Tymon Smith

Rust and Bone

Director: Jacques Audiard

Cast: Marion Cotillard, Matthias Schoenaerts, Armand Verdure, Celine Sallette, Bouli Lanners

Jacques Audiard, the director of the 2010 Best Foreign Film Oscar nominee A Prophet, returns with Rust and Bone, an unsentimental human story of love on the fringes of Cote D'Azur society.

Bulky, quiet and socially brusque Alain (Schoenaerts) arrives in Antibes from Belgium with his young son, Sam, in tow. He moves in with his sister, who works as a cashier in a supermarket.

While working as a bouncer in a nightclub, Alain meets the beautiful and somewhat haughty Stephanie (Cotillard), who works with the orcas at the aquarium. When she loses her legs in a tragic accident, Stephanie calls on Alain for help, and their lives begin to change as their relationship develops.

Audiard's particular strength is to take material, adapted from a book of short stories by Canadian writer Craig Davidson, that has so much potential for sentimentality and cliché, and play it down.

This allows his leads to carry the story through their performances, which are nuanced and so comfortable that it is hard to believe sometimes that they're not real people in a documentary rather than actors.

Cotillard is especially strong as Stephanie and Belgian actor Schoenaerts (previously seen in last year's excellent Belgian foreign Oscar nominee Bullhead) gives depth to the brutish and sometimes too frank Alain, whose transformation is the ultimate point of the story.

Audiard's use of sound, often cutting out background conversations and noises, strengthens the focus of the story on the characters, and he is not afraid to cut in and out of scenes before more traditional rules might dictate he should.

The wandering nature of the film also serves to replicate the nature of the relationship between the characters. If there is a criticism it is perhaps that the final act seems too convenient and out of sync with the rest of the story. That can't take away from the fact that this is still one of the most refreshing and honest films you'll see this year, though its themes and characters are not always comfortable or easy to deal with.

It's not all doom and gloom and suffering - there's also bare-knuckle boxing, some killer whales and the best ever use of a Katy Perry song in cinematic history.

This is an intelligent and complex examination of the issues that those on the sidelines of French society must deal with on a day-to-day basis. It's not all topless sunbathing, driving Ferraris and throwing Peter Stuyvesant parties on yachts. As Rust and Bone reminds us, real people live in the south of France too.

• 'Rust and Bone' opens at select cinemas nationwide today

Another triumph from Audiard and a Cotillard masterclass, this bruising, tender melodrama lingers long in the memory. - Phil de Semlyen, Empire

A striking mixture of grit and lyricism featuring two powerful performances and a kind of audacity in its tenderness. - Philippa Hawker, The Sydney Morning Herald

A bruising, beautiful and fierce love story. - Tim Robey, ©The Telegrah