Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 27 March

Rust and Bone (Audiard, 2012)

On this day in 2013, I pos­ted a review for the great French drama Rust and Bone which lost out to Haneke’s Amour for the 2012 Palme d’Or. That’s an illus­tra­tion of how long films took to get a loc­al release in those days…

Academy Award-winner Marion Cotillard is the big name on the mar­quee but the film really belongs to Matthias Schoenaerts who lays down a por­trait of wounded mas­culin­ity as riv­et­ing as any of De Niro’s clas­sic per­form­ances. He’s Alain, a drift­er and waster who lands in pic­tur­esque Antibes with his young son. He’s use­ful in a scrap but use­less as a par­ent and some of the most dif­fi­cult scenes in the film are of him fail­ing to look after the boy.

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Working secur­ity doesn’t really pay the bills – topped-up by barek­nuckle box­ing – but it does intro­duce him to Cotillard, a train­er of killer whales at the loc­al mar­ine park. When she suf­fers a hor­rendous acci­dent and with­draws into lonely self-pity these two wounded and stub­born char­ac­ters find a way to con­nect that may sur­prise you. I’m a suck­er for films about redemp­tion and you may be sur­prised to find out – after watch­ing the couple of hours – that redemp­tion is what’s on the menu here.

You can argue about the end­ing. I feel that the film would be bor­der­line unwatch­able without it but I’ve spoken to oth­ers who feel that it’s a cop out. All I can say is that you should go along and see if these unlikely char­ac­ters can ingra­ti­ate them­selves into your hearts they way they finally man­aged to get into mine.

Also reviewed in that Capital Times column: A Lady in Paris star­ring Jeanne Moreau in her 140^th film role and the Lord of the Rings-inspired adapt­a­tion of Jack the Giant Slayer (“Kids who can handle the fact that there’s a lot of unmourned death will enjoy Jack the Giant Slayer. Younger ones, not so much.”)

Where to watch xxxx

Aotearoa: Digital rent­al from Apple

Australia: Digital rent­al from Apple, Google, YouTube or Fetch

Canada: Streaming on Prime Video

USA: Digital rent­al from Apple, Amazon, Google, YouTube or Vudu

UK: Streaming on StudioCanal

Further reading

Brollie is a new Australia-based stream­ing ser­vice which is also avail­able in New Zealand and not­able for offer­ing their titles at no charge (so far).

It’s based on the cata­logue of the boutique dis­trib­ut­or Umbrella Entertainment and I sampled some of their wares for RNZ.

Editor’s note

We are fast approach­ing the Easter break in New Zealand (actu­ally, let’s be hon­est, every­where) which means that there will be no updates from Funerals & Snakes on Good Friday or Easter Monday.

Therefore this week’s new releases (includ­ing Godzilla x Kong and Io Capitano) will be covered next Friday.

We apo­lo­gise for any incon­veni­ence this may cause.