By M
I have been given a lot of romantic advice in my life and after all these years I have managed to create categories and identify the relevant parameters that make of each category a success.
Basically, there are three approaches to a successful relationship:
1/ You are perfectly aware of the other person’s flaws, but adopting a cost-benefit analysis you conclude that the person has more qualities than flaws and that it is therefore in your interest to stick around
2/ You are so very much in love that you see the flaws only for instants and are driven forward by a crazy strength- but you know the flaws are there because your (good) friends keep pointing them out (this only counts if it’s sincere – all the times you faked category 2, driven by lack of courage instead of strength, do not count)
3/ The person has no flaws, the person neurotic sprouts fit perfectly with your neurotic sprouts
Option 1 has the first phase in common with all the relationships that don’t work, i.e. you are perfectly aware of your partner’s flaws. Yet, in relationships that don’t work, instead of going for the cost-benefit analysis, you spend a significant amount of time imagining what the person should be like instead of being flawed. This can turn into a very detailed, meticulous construction of what sentences the person should have said instead of the ones it said, etc.
Needless to say, I have never applied this wisdom to my romantic life. Yet, I have always applied it to movies. The majority of films are for me in category 4 (i.e. I see a scene I don’t like and think of what should have been done instead). I have a few in category 3 (Mulholland Drive; Paris, Texas; Annie Hall; Ieri Oggi Domani and probably some others) and a few in category 1 (Morse; Amour; A Prophet; Melancholia; Gloria).
Rust and Bone is my first and only category 2. I could see the flaws, but I couldn’t remember them seconds after they happened. After tremendous effort I can tell you some of them: the images of the blood in the water are vulgar, the close-up on Cotillard’s trainers is ridiculous, a close-up on a teeth falling on the floor… I know there are more.
I remember the strength crystal clear, only not as something I can describe. I can give you some abstractions: the eroticism of Cotillard’s dismembered body; the eroticism of Schoenaerts massive body; the delicacy; the violence; the openness that love gives; the courage that love gives; the patience that love gives.
This is a movie about love like any other. Please watch it.
cucurbitacee 