Best Actress Oscar winner Marion Cotillard (“La Vie En Rose”), who has not quite been as impressive in her Hollywood films (most recently “The Dark Knight Rises”) knocks it out of the park in an Oscar-caliber performance as a legless former orca trainer in the French film “Rust and Bone,” which premiered yesterday at the Toronto Film Festival after its bow in Cannes. She loses the limbs in a horrible accident at a French version of Sea World and we see her recovery and being fitted for prosthetic limbs.
Unusually for a film of this type, it focuses on her character’s relationship with a rough, burly bare-knuckle boxer (Mattias Schoenaerts) who rescues her from a bar brawl. The single father of a 5-year-old who lives with his sister, he treats our heroine with dignity and respect and their friendship blossoms into something more. Cotillard makes the sex scenes (in which she appears nude, abetted by some amazing special effects) appear natural and tasteful, and her exploration of her new life (which includes stepping in for her lover’s manager) holds your interest even when the film takes some melodramatic turns.
Its one of three Oscar contenders in Toronto that center on disabled characters — the others being a polio victim (John Hawkes) trying to lose his virginity in the superb “The Sessions” (formerly known as “The Surrogate” when it bowed at Sundance, and Bill Murray as President Franklin D. Roosevelt in “Hyde Park on Hudson,” which is showing here over the weekend after its bow at Telluride. “Rust and Bone” will be released by Sony Picture Classics on Nov. 16. It’s one to look out for.