Jacques Audiard
New Film: Rust and Bone
Country: France
Age: 60
Best Known For: 2009's A Prophet, one of modern cinema's most powerful prison dramas
Cannes History
Two previous Competition titles: 2009's A Prophet and 1996's A Self-Made Hero. The former won the Grand Prix award (usually thought of as the Competition's runner-up), while the latter, won Best Screenplay.
His Resume
Audiard is a two-time Cesar Award (France's equivalent to the Oscars) winner for Best Film—2005's The Beat That My Heart Skipped and the aforementioned A Prophet, two films for which he also won Best Director and Best Screenplay awards.
Rust and Bone, his newest film, is Audiard's sixth time in the director's chair, though he's a credited writer on 19 total films, dating all the way back to 1974's Kisses Till Monday.
2002's Read My Lips was Audiard's first taste of international success (the film grossed about $1.5 million in the U.S.), while A Prophet earned $2 million U.S. and a total of almost $18 million worldwide, making the film his highest-grossing by a large margin.
Audiard, like his Palme d'Or competitor Wes Anderson, often works with men and women more than once. Rust and Bone is his second consecutive screenplay co-written by Thomas Bidegain, while Stephane Fontaine has lensed Audiard's last three films. All six of his films were edited by Juliette Welfling and scored by the great Alexandre Desplat. On the acting front, things have been less consistent (there isn't yet a Bill Murray to Audiard's Wes Anderson), but Niels Arestrup has done repeat business (A Prophet, The Beat That My Heart Skipped), as has Mathieu Kassovitz (See How They Fall, A Self-Made Hero). And some of France's biggest stars (Romain Duris, Vincent Cassel, Marion Cotillard) have all worked with Audiard.
Audiard's films, it seems, have two speeds: There's the generally lightweight drama of a Read My Lips, which chronicles the relationship between a hearing-impaired woman and an ex-con. Then, there's A Prophet and, to a lesser extent, The Beat That My Heart Skipped, which are really searing character pieces, steeped in violence.
Audiard On-Demand
Hulu Plus: N/A
iTunes: A Prophet
Netflix Instant: N/A
Vudu: A Prophet, The Best That My Heart Skipped
Rust and Bone
"An adaptation of Canadian writer Craig Davidson's 2005 short story collection which depicts a savage world populated by afflicted prizefighters, fighting dogs, amputee sex addicts, and gamblers." —The Playlist
Plot details, specifically an answer to the questions of how many and which of the source material's many threads will be included in the film, are scarce. The international trailer (embedded below) doesn't give much away, though it seems safe to assume the film will harken back to Audiard's first few films, at least as far as romance goes. If the film works, leads Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts will likely be in the conversation for acting awards at Cannes, but the star of the entire festival could be Audiard, who many thought was snubbed for A Prophet (it lost to Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon).
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