Big Belgian star has Cannes in a swoon
Source: Agencies |
May 18, 2012, Friday
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Print Edition
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IT is only day two, but the Cannes film festival has already uncovered a breakout star in Belgian Matthias Schoenaerts, who has earned critical acclaim and plenty of swoons for his portrayal of tough guy Ali in French drama "Rust and Bone."
Schoenaerts is not new to the big screen - he has appeared in more than 20 films, including "Bullhead," nominated for a foreign language film Academy Award earlier this year.
But for thousands of journalists and critics in Cannes, France, for the annual cinema showcase, a press screening yesterday of the moving love story Rust and Bone ("De Rouille et d'Os") was their first look at the physically imposing 34-year-old.
Within minutes of the movie ending, Schoenaerts was being asked about his prospects in Hollywood.
"It's funny you say so, because last week they called me for 'Rambo 34,' and I said I'll do it if I get 35 and 36 as well," he joked.
He may hope to replicate the success of French actor Jean Dujardin, who was little known outside France until the Cannes world premiere last year of "The Artist" which set him on a path to global fame and a best actor Oscar.
In Rust and Bone, Schoenaerts plays the central character Ali, a gruff hulk of a man who befriends a Marineland employee called Stephanie, played by Oscar winner Marion Cotillard, after she loses her legs in an accident at work.
Down on his luck and sleeping with five-year-old son Sam in his sister's garage on the southern French coast, Ali lives hand-to-mouth before taking up brutal but lucrative bare-knuckle fighting for extra cash.
It takes a major shock to shake him from his emotional torpor, and at the film's end there was warm applause from the notoriously picky critics and scribes in Cannes.
Schoenaerts is not new to the big screen - he has appeared in more than 20 films, including "Bullhead," nominated for a foreign language film Academy Award earlier this year.
But for thousands of journalists and critics in Cannes, France, for the annual cinema showcase, a press screening yesterday of the moving love story Rust and Bone ("De Rouille et d'Os") was their first look at the physically imposing 34-year-old.
Within minutes of the movie ending, Schoenaerts was being asked about his prospects in Hollywood.
"It's funny you say so, because last week they called me for 'Rambo 34,' and I said I'll do it if I get 35 and 36 as well," he joked.
He may hope to replicate the success of French actor Jean Dujardin, who was little known outside France until the Cannes world premiere last year of "The Artist" which set him on a path to global fame and a best actor Oscar.
In Rust and Bone, Schoenaerts plays the central character Ali, a gruff hulk of a man who befriends a Marineland employee called Stephanie, played by Oscar winner Marion Cotillard, after she loses her legs in an accident at work.
Down on his luck and sleeping with five-year-old son Sam in his sister's garage on the southern French coast, Ali lives hand-to-mouth before taking up brutal but lucrative bare-knuckle fighting for extra cash.
It takes a major shock to shake him from his emotional torpor, and at the film's end there was warm applause from the notoriously picky critics and scribes in Cannes.
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