Matthias Schoenaerts works on instinct
Belgian actor jumped at chance to collaborate with Jacques Audiard
It didn’t take much arm-twisting to persuade Matthias Schoenaerts to star in De rouille et d’os (Rust and Bone), the critically acclaimed French/Belgian flick that opens the Cinemania festival Thursday night.
All the Belgian actor needed to know was that the film was to be directed by Jacques Audiard, the absurdly talented French auteur responsible for De battre mon coeur s’est arrêté and Un prophète.
“He makes films that for me represent pure cinema,” said Schoenaerts, on the phone from his home in Anvers in Belgium Wednesday afternoon. “Also, in all of his films you can see he does amazing work with actors. The actors are always very powerful in his films. What I like about his cinema is it’s a type of cinema that’s quite tough but it’s also very subtle. It’s a type of cinema that’s very nuanced and sensitive, but it’s also not afraid to show the brutality of life.”
There is indeed an astonishing force to De rouille et d’os. The movie, which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, focuses on the unlikely relationship between Ali (Schoenaerts), a guy who’s more than a little rough around the edges, and Stéphanie (Marion Cotillard), a trainer of orca whales. Ali has come down to Antibes on the Côte d’Azur after picking up his 5-year-old son from a foster home, and he’s bunked in with his sister. When he and Stéphanie first meet, at the bar where he’s working as a bouncer, she’s underwhelmed by this rather primitive fellow. Shortly after, she’s involved in a horrific accident with the whales and loses both her legs from the knees down.
In the hands of a lesser director or most anyone in Hollywood, this would have likely degenerated into a cheap three-hankie melodrama. But Audiard turns it into something much more original. Freely adapted by Audiard and Thomas Bidegain from a short-story collection by Canadian author Craig Davidson, it’s an incredibly moving love story that deliberately messes with the conventions of how this type of tale is normally told.
Schoenaerts and Cotillard — who won the best-actress Oscar for her portrayal of Édith Piaf in La Vie en rose — are both astonishing. But Schoenaerts is particularly impressive, given that he’s playing an inarticulate tough guy who isn’t all that likeable in the early going.
“It’s a guy who reacts to everything in a very instinctive fashion, whether it’s in a brutal situation or a tender one,” Schoenaerts said. “He’s very sincere. He’s not someone who calculates exactly what he’s going to do. And he does many things that don’t make him particularly lovable. So the important thing was to make him a character that we could at least understand. He doesn’t have good or bad intentions. He doesn’t have intentions, period. He reacts, that’s all. Stéphanie is a woman who needs help, so he helps her. It’s not a choice. It’s a reflex for him. If someone bugs him, he punches them in the face.”
Schoenaerts, who made a name for himself globally with the 2011 Belgian foreign-language Oscar nominee Bullhead, says De rouille et d’os has helped boost his profile. He has since shot Blood Ties with Clive Owen, Mila Kunis and Cotillard; it’s the first U.S. film directed by French filmmaker/actor Guillaume Canet. And he stars in the Hollywood remake of Loft, the top-grossing Flemish film of all time. (He also starred in the original.) The American version is due in cinemas in January.
Schoenaerts was meant to be in Montreal for Thursday’s local première of De rouille et d’os, but he cancelled early this week for fear of flying straight into Sandy.
“To start with, I’m not a big fan of flying. So the plane plus a big storm, that’s a bit too much for me. I didn’t want to be on an eight-hour flight thinking all the time that we were
heading right into a storm.”
De rouille et d’os screens as part of the Cinemania festival Thursday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday at 9 a.m. at the Imperial Cinema, 1430 Bleury St. For more information, visit festivalcinemania.com.