Daily Front Row

2012 November 9

Nature Versus Nurture

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Marion Cotillard
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(NEW YORK) So how does a solo Marion Cotillard end up playing the slots in a Detroit casino? Turns out, pretty easily. The Oscar-winning actress was temporarily detained in the Motor City on Wednesday night when her trans-Atlantic flight was rerouted due to the Nor'easterner that was pummeling, yet again, the East Coast. But she appeared in the highest possible spirits on Thursday night, when The Cinema Society, Vanity Fair, and Dior debuted her new film, Rust and Blood, at the Landmark Sunshine Theater. Sporting a transparent tulle gown, embroidered with sequins and designed by Raf Simons, she introduced the film to a rapt audience of Olivier Theyskens, Karolina Kurkova, Helena Christensen, Stephen Gaghan, Stefano Tonchi, and a bundled-up Debbie Harry. "He's a poet," she said simply of the film's director, Jacques Audiard, whose script explores the ancient conflicts of man-versus-man, man-versus-nature, and man-versus-human-nature. 

In short? Cotillard plays a trainer of killer whales who works at an amusement park and coaxes mighty mammals to garishly leap and preen to a score of Katy Perry. When a freak accident results in the loss of her legs, she rings up a down-on-his-luck boxer, Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts), whom she met just once at a club. Then, the battles begin in earnest. The film, which gets bloodier and bloodier, led a few audience members to cover their eyes, but at the after-party at Indochine, the mood lightened up considerably as athletes, actresses, and fashion folk took solace in Belvedere mojitos (and waxed poetic about Cotillard). Another Oscar nod? Likely.
ASHLEY BAKER