RUST AND BONE ***

In Jacques Audiard's superb movie"Rust and Bone", Marion Cotillard plays Stephanie, a trainer of killer whales who has lost her legs in an horrific accident. It is a brilliant piece of acting, quite the equal to her Edith Piaf in "La Vie en Rose" and it should have earned her another Academy Award nomination but mysteriously she was over-looked. Audiard's film is a love story as powerful and as moving as any in cinema in which a couple of broken people find themselves and each other. The man Stephanie meets is Ali, a handsome, caring security guard with a five year old son who finds himself drawn into a crude form of boxing in order to make money. He, too, is beautifully played by Matthias Schoenaerts.

Despite the downbeat subject matter Audiard's film is the very antithesis of sentimental, something an American film dealing with similar material could never be. These are damaged individuals living on the fringe and not always as sympathetic as they might be. Affection doesn't always come easy to them yet this is a love story as real as they come; these are people who need each other first and who only learn to love and to forgive over time. That you will remember them long after you have left the cinema is testament to just how fine Audiard's film and his leading players are. "Rust and Bone" deals one hell of an emotional wallop.