21 and Over – Time to grow up

I.D. but no I.Q.: Miles Teller, Justin Chon and Skylar Astin in 21 and Over

You know, just because I review films doesn’t mean I should make them. You probably wouldn’t like a film I’d direct. I’d probably end up giving it a bad review.

So why writers of hit movies so often think that they should sit in the director’s chair and tell everyone exactly how their script should be realised is beyond me. David S. Goyer wrote the first two Blade movies before directing their bastard child Blade: Trinity. Years before him novelist William Peter Blatty took the reins on The Exorcist III after John Boorman’s disastrous sequel, and hardly did a better job. Robert Towne’s writing credits include Chinatown, Reds, Mission: Impossible and consulting work on Bonne & Clyde and The Godfather; his directorial career is hardly worth glancing at.

So if these writers failed, what on Earth made The Hangover’s two scribblers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore think they could run matters on their own? If anything the success of The Hangover was far more tied to the unexpected chemistry between its leads than to its “ingenious” scripting.

Cobbling together a new narrative from run-off from The Hangover mixed with clumps of Old School and Weekend at Bernie’s, 21 and Over would be a new low for teen gross-out comedy if Project X hadn’t already licked that particular floor. Drunken mayhem, awkward sexual encounters and jokes about race, mental health and homosexuality are hardly new, and they’ve rarely been performed with such commercialist laziness.

To celebrate his coming of legal age, Jeff Chang’s (Justin Chon) two oldest school friends Casey (Skylar Astin) and Miller (Miles Teller) pay him a surprise visit at his college to show him the night of his life. Unfortunately the overworked med student has that all-important job interview the next morning and a very scary dad who arranged it for him, so the pals’ visit was in vain. Ah sure, they can go out for just the one, can’t they?

A few bars later and Jeff Chang is passed out and Casey and Miller have no idea how to get him home. Casey falls madly in love with the first girl he meets, Nicole (Sarah Wright), but in a collision of clichés so ferocious it could reveal the Higgs boson, she is both leaving for South America the next morning and dating a jerk jock. Jeff Chang ends up dressed in women’s underwear with rude words written on his face, while Casey and Miller must escape a fearsome Latina sorority while playing drinking games to find out where Jeff Chang lives (you can stop even trying to make sense of this now).

So many moments in 21 and Over reveal the writers’ ability for comic set-ups, from a buffalo stampede at a pep rally to the heroes’ theft of a golf cart, but filmmakers Lucas and Moore repeatedly show their inability to execute their own gags. Jeff Chang gets so drunk he climbs up on a bar and pees on it; later he rides a bucking bronco and vomits in bullet time. The ideas are there, but there’s no humour built into them other than what they are, which it turns out is just nasty. Your enjoyment of this film will be directly correlated to how funny you find the idea of a man eating a tampon. The only truly strong gross-out laugh in the whole movie comes in the third act with an accidental circumcision, but it’s far too little far too late.

Where exactly the heart of this film lies is unclear. Jeff Chang may have just turned 21, but it’s hardly his first time blowing off steam or having a beer – he just has an I.D. for it now. The script attempts to unearth why old friends drift apart, as the leads discuss their physical and emotional distances from one another, but it’s very clear that there is no reason why these characters would ever be friends in the first place, especially as Miller fills most of his dialogue to Casey calling him “Jew” and detailing what he would like to do to his sister. A surprising subplot about mental health issues invades the film halfway through, but is shed with violent immaturity as the trio of friends null the pain with alcohol and camaraderie; perhaps the worst advice ever handed down to young viewers of American movies.

Perhaps the only interesting element of this film is how Chinese money was accepted by the producers to film extra material for a Chinese cut of the film. In this version, not coming to a cinema near you any time soon, Jeff Chang is an international student who is so scandalised by American debauchery that he returns to the People’s Republic a wiser, more sober person. There’s a moral in that, something missing from every frame of the US cut of 21 and Over. At least film studies students for years to come can spend their time poring over the differences between the two versions, so someone can get something out of this film’s existence.

If you’re looking for laughs, or excitement, or character development and storytelling, you’re not just in the wrong place, but you’re in the wrong state of mind (or on the wrong substances). If you’re 21 or over, you’re too old for this crap.

1/5

(originally published at http://www.filmireland.net)

2012 in review – The year of archery and French wheelchairs

As the credits begin to roll on another year of film (don’t bother sticking around to the end, the bonus scene after the credits is just a hangover), it’s time to look back on what the world of film offered up in 2012. There were highs and lows, unexpected joys and underwhelming potential wonders. Hollywood provided its most entertaining popcorn blockbuster in a generation. French cinema shattered our hearts over and over and over.

Early on The Artist won out at the Oscars, but rather than reignite interest in silent cinema, it became a Netflix-condemned anomaly unto itself. Thanks to 3D, The Avengers won out over The Dark Knight Rises and its IMAX presentation, but the launch of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit series caused the real fuss with its introduction of HFR (higher frame rate, 48 frames per second), which has caused more division amongst audiences than Prometheus. Films such as Berberian Sound Studio and Cloud Atlas aspired to greatness, but fell at the all-important last hurdle, having an ending. Michael Haneke returned to Cannes, made everyone and their mothers cry, then went home victorious to launch a parody Twitter account.

Archery!

It was once again a mediocre year for animation. Pixar clawed their way out of the wreckage of Cars 2 with the unfairly disliked Brave, though it remained a step down from their sensational output in the last decade. Frankenweenie and Rise of the Guardians charmed but did not wow. ParaNorman sadly escaped my gaze.

It would be unfair to say it was a poor year for documentary, but I was left disappointed by many of the most praised docs this year; Samsara, The Imposter and Bill Cunningham – New York were all strong works that did not fully succeed in their ambitions. Disappointingly, Waiting for Sugarman, 5 Broken Cameras and Tabu were all missed by me – I suspect my top 20 might have looked very different had I caught them.

On a personal note 2012 was not the year career-wise I had hoped it to be, but my writing, both here and for Film Ireland Magazine continued and I like to think improved – this blog expanded two-fold over the last 12 months, something to be proud of. I continued to trawl through the greatest of film cinema, most notably binging on the Rocky movies, The Bourne Trilogy, The Apu Trilogy and The Godfather Trilogy – each of those in single, incredible sittings. On the big screen I revisited classics such as The Apartment, A Night to Remember, RoboCop, Baraka, Bambi, The Shining, Fantastic Planet, Haxan and the 4K restoration of Lawrence of Arabia. My major goal for the year was to finally delve into horror cinema, a genre I had avoided for much of my life, with first-time viewings of Carrie, Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Omen, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and George Romero’s original Living Dead Trilogy. More specifically, I delved into Italian horror, seeing some of the best films of Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, as well as Lamberto Bava’s Demons films, and also gave myself a light education in the rockumentary, finally watching The Last Waltz, Stop Making Sense, Buena Vista Social Club and the director’s cut of Woodstock. Elsewhere, I finally completed the IMDB Top 250 list, an achievement that would be so much greater if not for the fact that, due to its constant shifting, I now find myself back at 249 (and not caring).

There were a handful of films I was eager to see this year but missed; Sightseers, Monsieur Lazhar, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Seven Psychopaths and Silver Linings Playbook. Due to my continued transatlantic travelling, my list is assembled of films released in Ireland or the US anywhere from 2011-2013, and films such as Django Unchained, Les Misérables and Wreck-It Ralph remain viewing for next year’s list.

French wheelchairs!

Films that nearly made the grade this year include Le Havre, Coriolanus, The Dark Knight Rises, Ted, Moonrise Kingdom, Killer Joe, The Kid With a Bike and Laurence Anyways. These and many others remain worthy viewing. But the following should all be seen and appreciated; they are my top 20 of 2012.

20. The Grey

Featuring an immensely committed, world-weary performance by Liam Neeson, what should have been a standard action/horror about plane crash survivors fending off a wolf pack turned out to be a treatise on the nature of faith and the human will to survive. With characterisation of a quality far beyond what this story called and some truly tense adventuring, The Grey hit harder than Liam Neeson punching a wolf in the face.

19. What Richard Did

It’s easy to forget some times that I am actually Irish; I know I often do. And despite my role in promoting film culture in Ireland, few Irish critics are harsher to Irish filmmakers when they drop the ball than I am. But when they get it right, they can get it so very right. Lenny Abrahamson’s What Richard Did, based on a true story about an accidental killing by privileged schoolboys of one of their own, delved deep into the issues of when uncontrollable testosterone and youthful arrogance collide. Beautifully capturing the light grey tones of Dublin city, What Richard Did is at its best tracking the distress of Richard (notable newcomer Jack Reynor) through intense, unrelenting camera movements.

18. Anna Karenina

As much an exercise in cinematic stagecraft as an adaptation of Tolstoy’s romantic novel, Joe Wright brought out all the visual big guns to set his film apart from its forebears. Theatres become palaces and diamonds become more emotive than the faces of the actors wearing them in this ultra-stylised drama. Keira Knightley gives it her best in the lead role, but it is the supporting players, most notably Jude Law and Domhnall Gleeson, who really steal the show, along with Tom Stoppard’s oft-inventive screenplay. Nothing else this year looked quite like it.

Full review

17. Argo

After years of lamentable acting and increasingly promising directing, Ben Affleck has finally won the love of all Hollywood with this tense, witty espionage drama. A spy thriller in which not a gun is fired or a woman seduced, Affleck recreates, with some liberties, the exodus of American civilians trapped in Tehran during the Iranian Revolution, while also poking fun at the Hollywood studio system, which was manipulated to help win the day. Superb attention to historical detail is what really sets this film apart. The tension is carried through to the very end, at the unfortunate expense of believability, but it remains a thrilling ride, with several exceptional supporting performances.

Full review

16. Looper

The first truly entertaining time-travel adventure since Marty McFly settled down for good in Hill Valley, Rian Johnson’s Looper looked at the consequences of actions through two versions of the same character, played by Bruce Willis and a Bruce Willised-up Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Exciting and playful with its impossible premise, Looper stood out for its wit and audacity. It faltered hugely in its third act, but it was too late to do the film any real damage – and the final 20 minutes proved an unexpected rollercoaster. As clever as popcorn cinema can get.

Full review

15. The Hunt

More than a decade after his magnificent Festen, Thomas Vinterberg returns to form with the dramatic thriller. A magnificently pained and frustrated Mads Mikkelsen stars as a kindergarten teacher falsely accused of child abuse. Rather than create a mystery around the events, Vinterberg and co-writer Tobias Lindholm allow the audience to be the only ones aware of how this dreadful confusion arose. This omniscience on the viewer’s behalf becomes tormenting as the town turns against the teacher. Superbly acted, it is given extra power by the brown and grey autumnal look of the Danish landscape, full of a slowly fading beauty.

14. Lincoln

Showing uncharacteristic restraint, Steven Spielberg directed a Civil War “epic” with almost no war. Playing like an extended season finale of The West Wing, Spielberg’s beautifully detailed period drama is entirely focused on scrambling for votes in the U.S. Congress. Milking the political clash over the abolition of slavery for all the drama and excitement it’s worth, Tony Kushner’s screenplay made the esteemed president a Machiavellian political mastermind, while Janusz Kamiński’s camera shot him like a former superhero returning for one last heroic act. Daniel Day-Lewis captured the president’s spirit, but it was Tommy Lee Jones who stole the film as the devoutly anti-slavery congressman Thaddeus Stevens.

13. The Raid

A bolt out of the blue that hit so hard the audience’s collective heads shattered several wall tiles, Gareth Evans’s Indonesian cop thriller/martial arts extravaganza was one of the year’s most unexpected critical darlings. Lethal human whirligig Iko Uwais played the cop trapped in a tower full of machete-wielding drug dealers, forced to fight his way out using every weapon and muscle at his disposal. The results were electrifying and often hilarious. Editing troubles aside, The Raid was one of the tightest action movies released all year.

Full review

12. The Intouchables (Untouchable)

The first of three French films on this list to feature the tragedy of a person confined to a wheelchair, and the film in which the wheelchair is most at the fore, this undeniably charming dramedy, based loosely on a true story, tells of a wealthy quadriplegic and his unlikely friendship with a street-smart layabout turned caregiver. Predictable and light, it is also superbly acted and told with boundless heart and (often dark) humour. Shamelessly uplifting without being slight, it is adeptly shot and edited.

11. Skyfall

Choking on the poison that was Quantum of Nonsense, James Bond brought himself back to life with a defibrillator shock once more, and this time that shock was Skyfall. Exceptionally written and paced, Skyfall had the audacity to focus more on the character of Bond than any other film in the series to date, while giving ample room to develop his relationship with the ever-excellent Judi Dench as M. Javier Bardem’s villain was left with a poor evil scheme, but was himself memorable as a vengeful ex-agent with mincing homoerotic undertones. Light on action, when it hit it came with a wallop. Sam Mendes’s direction was solid but came second always to Roger Deakins exceptional camerawork.

Full review

10. Life of Pi

Adapting a spiritual novel into a personal epic with countless remarkable special effects shots, Ang Lee continues his quest to be the most diverse filmmaker in the business. Weaving the wonderful tall tale of Piscine ‘Pi’ Patel into a visually astounding oceanic adventure took remarkable skill, which bursts forth from the screen in every shot – literally in the case of the impressive 3D presentation. Suraj Sharma plays the devout theist castaway on a lifeboat with a vicious tiger. The metaphor at the film’s centre lands powerfully, but it is the clever dialogue and mesmerising visuals that make this film stand out.

9. Holy Motors

Leos Carax’s veritable clusterfuck of madness is at some level a statement about the falsehood of (digital) cinema. At another level it is just plain bonkers. Chameleonic Denis Lavant plays everyone you could think of, as a performer doomed (it would seem) to forever play the strangest of roles; from romantic lead to frustrated father, beggar woman to subterranean troll, his own killer to husband to a chimpanzee. It lapses in many of its instalments (installations?), but as a whole it is an astoundingly odd and wonderful piece of filmmaking.

8. The Avengers (Avengers Assemble)

Against all the odds and an army of alien beasties, this superhero mash-up succeeded on almost every level. Four years of films leading up to this one, introducing some of the leading players and the universe’s themes, paid off as the egos of Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and Bruce ‘The Hulk’ Banner collided. The result was unexpectedly tremendous, with Joss Whedon’s wildly entertaining script bouncing the characters’ personalities off one another beautifully, and with plenty of laughs. Everyone played to their strengths, the minor characters were given moments to shine and the action redefined explosive. Here’s to Phase 2, eh?

Full review

7. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

This pastoral police procedural drama, set over a night and the day that followed, gave a haunting insight into modern Turkey. Exceptionally well acted and with more than its fair share of beautiful, memorable shots (the mini adventure of a tumbling apple cannot be forgotten), Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s wonderful film was let down by a tragically sluggish third act that clashed with the astounding first two thirds of the film. Still, as a whole Once Upon a Time in Anatolia remains far more impressive than any American crime drama of the same year.

6. The Master

Barely passing under the bar set by There Will Be Blood, P.T. Anderson’s The Master cannot be underestimated. The incomparable story of two men who need each other for contradicting reasons, The Master would still be a great film without the powerhouse performances of Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman. With them, and with remarkable assistance from Amy Adams, this is a drama that must be experienced before you can believe it. Occasional lapses in pacing and a visual aesthetic that rarely lives up to the power of the drama do it a disservice, but the mastery of filmmaking on display here cannot be denied.

Full review

5. The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists!

The finest animated feature released this year, this daft comic gem from Aardman Animations brought more laughs than any other two films released this year could muster between them. Rattling out sight gags and wordplay like the spiritual successor to Airplane!, The Pirates! also featured some superb voicework (especially from animation virgin Hugh Grant as the pirate captain, named the Pirate Captain) and took Aardman’s animation style to new limits. The incredibly detailed stop-motion sets (photographed in 3D) boggle the eyes as you try to take in everything you can see – there are more sight gags per image than the human brain can process. It may not have the same heart as some of Aardman’s earlier offerings, but there is a sweetness to be found here. It doesn’t matter though, the outstanding quality of the Gatling-gun comedy and the craft on display are what make this the work of brilliance it is.

Full review

As a bonus, here’s a picture of me with the model Pirate Ship from The Pirates! taken during a studio tour of Aardman Animations back in 2011.

4. Amour

Michael Haneke’s heartbreaking tale of an elderly husband caring for his stroke-addled wife could not be more perfectly handled or acted. The camera is confined to the apartment like Anne herself, but gently roams its rooms and corridors capturing flashes of the dying days of this unspectacular couple. Punctuated with comedy (a rogue pigeon invades the house) and horror (a nightmare of floodwater and disembodied, strangling hands), Amour’s power is inescapable. ’60s romantic movie stars Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva excel, the former capturing a pained patience, the latter the agony of natural imprisonment; within a wheelchair, within a bed, within her own body.

Full review

3. Beasts of the Southern Wild

This majestic imagining of a Louisiana community struggling against the elements, told through the eyes of a wondrous, haunted young girl, is the breakthrough movie of 2012. First-time director Benh Zeitlin crafts a world drifting on the border of reality. Shot on 16mm, Beasts succeeds in finding a unique beauty in the overgrown damp of the bayou. The narration by six-year-old Hushpuppy (the revelation that is Quvenzhané Wallis) is perhaps overwrought, but it is delivered with astounding honesty and passion. As the world around her is literally and metaphorically washed away, her imagination of the end times allows for a powerful reclamation of human spirit and dignity. The score alone, all plucky Southern instruments, is enough to make this film a triumph. Thanks to its other successes, it is a minor masterpiece.

Full review

2. Rust and Bone

The follow-up to his phenomenal A Prophet, Jacques Audiard turns to a more humanistic tale in adapting Craig Davidson’s short story collection from an assemblage of broken lives into a remarkable drama of shattered dreams and people repairing one another. Matthias Schoenaerts and Marion Cotillard each give career-defining performances as, respectively, a bare-knuckle boxer-cum-struggling father and a sexually defined whale trainer left powerless and paralysed in a gruesome accident. The tenderness and frustration of this odd couple’s relationship rings amazingly true, while Stéphane Fontaine’s near-divine handheld camerawork circles them effortlessly, stopping from time to time to capture remarkable stand-alone images. Over-powering stuff, altogether.

Full review

1. The Turin Horse

Far from the most entertaining film of 2012, no film released this year deserves immortality quite like Béla Tarr’s intended swan song. Imagining the daily life of a beleaguered workhorse, whose plight is fabled to have caused the mental breakdown of Friedrich Nietzsche, The Turin Horse is shot in hypnotic, terrifying black and white. Capturing the monstrous monotony of rural life at the turn of the last century, Tarr takes us through several interchangeable days as a brutish farmer and his weary daughter go about their chores. The repeated imagery as man and woman eat their daily potato, each time shot from a different, intense angle, each time robbed of civility by the farmer’s slurpy gorging, makes for painful, powerful viewing/listening. The outstanding black and white cinematography, the phenomenal use of music and the set design and wind-battered landscapes create a cinematic experience unlike any other. It is difficult viewing, but the craft involved in it cannot be rivalled.

A Turin-out for the books

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And now, my top 5 worst films of the year. I managed to miss a few apparent clunkers; Project X, The Watch, Battleship or Piranha 3DD. But I still managed to catch some pretty awful stuff. Some lamented films, such as John Carter and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, were actually pretty harmless. Films that nearly made the list include The Bourne Legacy, Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and This Means War. Despite hating more than almost any film I can think, there was no denying that Ruby Sparks is too adequately made to reduce it to this waste bin of cinema. Instead I’ll condemn it to the waste bin of human decency.

5. Snow White & the Huntsman

This uninspired, or rather thievishly over-inspired, adolescent fantasy threw everything it had at the screen and none of it stuck. An evil queen far more radiant than the Snow White. Kristen Stewart wearing armour. And leading an army after giving a dramatic speech. A love triangle in which none of the corners seemed particularly interested in one another. Actually, this film did feature one pretty awesome feat of archery (theme!), but it was of course pilfered from the infinitely superior Princess Mononoke. Thank goodness for the amazing sequence with giant deer god in the forest that was oh no wait stolen from Princess Mononoke. I love Princess Mononoke. I hated this.

4. Haywire

Despite the lamentable acting of MMA fighter Gina Carano, your film is in trouble when she’s the best thing in it. Several fine actors (most notably Michael Douglas) phone in their performances so hard they even reversed the charges. Michael Fassbender forgets his accent in the last scene again. The decent fight choreography and the surprisingly good sense of Dublin geography could not prevent this formulaic purported pastiche from being one of the most excruciating viewing experiences of the year. Steven Soderbergh has directed a movie so badly edited The Asylum would look down on it. Oh, and the jazz score? No.

3. Taken 2

Liam Neeson beats up anyone with darker skin than him, this time without any of the urgency or fun of the original. Grenades get thrown recklessly at civilians. Mosques are shown with deafening boom sounds on the soundtrack, just to remind you that foreign things are evil. They’re not really, but pumping this much cash into a movie and ending up with this surely is.

Full review

2. Charlie Casanova

What was that I was saying about Irish movies? This hardly seen Irish indie does its best to deconstruct the worst excesses of the Celtic Tiger generation, but creates a character so ludicrously cartoonish in his villainy that he fails to represent anything at all. Shot on grim low-grade digital in not one but two of the ugliest hotels in the world, this was an almighty mess of editing and dialogue. Lead actor Emmett Scanlan gives it so much socks that he and his improbable moustache swallow the movie whole.

1. The Campaign

But at least the makers of Charlie Casanova tried! In a year when political satire was a much needed relief, this Congressional comedy ran for the safety of the silly hills. No attempt was made to properly address the preposterous (and potentially hilarious) contradictions of the American two-party system. Instead The Campaign opted to have Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis do their best to out-swear and out-stupid one another. The results were hardly funny. It was the film audiences deserved, but not the one they got. An utter waste of several talents.

Here’s hoping for 2012!

Rust and Bone – The fight to rebuild two lives

Face to face: Marion Cotillard with an orca

From the director of A Prophet, surely one of the finest films of the last decade, comes this masterful, deeply affecting drama. Gone are the themes of organised crime and ethnicity that permeated Jacques Audiard’s two previous films, The Beat That My Heart Skipped and A Prophet, in favour of man’s struggle against poverty and tragedy and a study of the scars this struggle leaves on the human body and soul. While Rust and Bone does not aspire to such extraordinary heights as A Prophet’s ‘The Godfather meets The Shawshank Redemption bathed in the Quran’, it is still a hugely ambitious film that paints a unique picture of human nature in broad strokes with a surprisingly simple story.

Matthias Schoenaerts, a hitherto (shamefully) unknown actor outside of his native Belgium, plays Ali, a gruff, emotionally withdrawn man who has just wrenched his son away from the boy’s junkie mother. Hoping to build a new life for their barely-a-family, Ali takes the boy to the south of France, where his sister and her husband live just above the poverty line.

Working as a bouncer in a local nightclub, Ali meets Stéphanie (Marion Cotillard), a deeply unhappy free spirit, who’s only small pleasure in life outside of her work is teasing men with her beauty and sexuality, to the dismay of her boyfriend. Her work as a trainer of killer whales at a marine resort is what keeps her going, until a horrifying tragedy leaves her a double amputee from the knees down. Alone and bitter, she turns to Ali for unsympathetic support, and a friends-with-benefits relationship soon develops, with unspoken feelings clawing underneath the icy surface.

Rust and Bone weaves an astonishing tale, melded together from two short stories by the Canadian author Craig Davidson. One part bitter love story, one part human struggle, it is always a mesmerising experience. Stéphanie’s rebirth is difficult but moving viewing, and the confidence she gains in her disability speaks tomes. Struggling for cash, Ali takes to bare-knuckle boxing, using his terrifying brute strength for the good of his son. Not since Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia has a film been more obsessed with the power and beauty of the human body – although here it is the imperfections that give the bodies their strength.

Lean on me: Matthias Schoenaerts carries Marion Cotillard from the waves

The film is full of understated brilliance. After her accident, we never see Stéphanie’s boyfriend again.  We can judge him for abandoning her, or accept that due to her treatment of him he used her accident as a way out. The film lets us decide. An early throwaway line of dialogue about the contents of a fridge has enormous consequences further down the line. A bloody handprint on a pane of glass says more than any words could.

Continuing their relationships since The Beat That My Heart Skipped, Audiard and cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine continue to prove themselves the finest operators of handheld cameras currently working in the cinematic arts. Despite the constant movement of the frame, the images captured are always clear and in focus. The lens is bombarded with Mediterranean sunlight, causing beautiful backlit images and stunning shadows. A dislodged, bloody tooth spinning on tarmac in slow motion carries more emotional weight than a dozen jaw-breaking fist fights. Stéphanie’s accident is shot in a frantic surge of camera movements more terrifying than the most nightmarish horror films. Later, she comes face to face with an orca – her passion and her undoing – which in a single steady shot swirls into focus from the darkness of its tank; it is an image more eye-boggling and alien than many fantasy films can even dream of conjuring.

In the lead roles Schoenaerts and Cotillard exceed all expectations. Schoenaerts takes Ali, who on paper is a bad, violent person, and finds a passionate, if weakened humanity in his hulking form. Cotillard soars through a kaleidoscope of emotions; rebellious, joyous, depressed; capturing each one effortlessly through her face and voice. Aided by some impressive special effects that digitally wipe her lower legs from countless frames, Cotillard demonstrates the pride and exhausting effort of starting over after becoming disabled, as well as the embarrassment and shame that can sadly all too often accompany disability.

With an unexpected denouement that will sink hearts into stomachs around the world, Rust and Bone is a hypnotic melodrama throughout. It may not hit with the same punch as A Prophet, but its life-affirming story of overcoming the harshest obstacles makes it one of the finest dramas in recent years. Audiard has done it again.

5/5