News@FMUL invited Dr. António Pais de Lacerda*, an “expert” in films related to medicine, to contribute with some movie suggestions for its readers. In addition to being the founder and president of MedCine Film Festival (Cascais, 2009), this FML lecturer has developed and maintains an updated lists of this type of movies that is given to students in Module III-I, in the first year of the Integrated Master Degree in Medicine.

News@FMUL thanks him for his precious support to medical culture and the “seventh art”.

*Assistant Lecturer of the Subjects Module III.I “Clinical Medicine – The Physician, the Person and the Patient” and Intensive Medicine at FMUL.
“Rust and bone”, by Jacques Audiard (France, 2012) 

Chance brings two emotionally wounded individuals together – one is emotionally injured, while the other has lost both legs in an accident.
Alain (Matthias Schoenaerts) goes with his 5-year-old son Sam (Armand Verdure), whom he barely knows, to his sister and brother-in-law’s house in Antibes. He is an unpleasant, insensitive and egocentric individual, apparently incapable of any loving manifestation. His rough, straightforward and unbridled (easily antisocial) masculinity perturbs and injures everyone he relates to, regardless of consequences. This “raw condition” fits appropriately with the street fighting he accepts to do for money.

A serious accident in a swimming pool show with orcas makes Stephanie (Marion Cotillard) realise, still in hospital, that she has been amputated. With the loss of her legs, she also loses the will to live.

Once she overcame her initial depression, she regained courage to bear the pain of her new intraphysic representations and relearn how to get her independence and functions back by adapting to mechanical prostheses, countering stigma and social prejudice. The relationship she develops with Alain, who shows no compassion for her (he even goes to the point of making “pedagogical” sex with her so that she realises that “it still works…”), turned out giving her the mental strength to cope/accept and find a reason to live.

The water, where the initial tragedy unfolds, becomes relevant again later on, following the experiences of Alain and Sam, playing a transformative role.

From a cinema viewpoint, the movie deserves to be emphasized. In addition to a meticulous direction of the actors, whose performance touches us due to the power and reality of the scenes (the amputation of Stephanie’s legs makes us believe that the drama happened in the real life of Marion Cotillard!), the way the shots are framed and the actual (aesthetical) way of filming gives us those moments when the viewers seem to be inside the screen, like intruders in the actual movie.

“De rouille et d’os“, directed by Jacques Audiard, was considered “Best Film” at the London Film Festival (2012) and received 4 “César” of the Académie des arts et techniques du cinema (Paris) in 2013 (Meilleure adaptation, Meilleur montage, Meilleure musique originale, Meilleur espoir masculin – Matthias Schoenaerts). Marion Cotillard was voted “Actress of the Year” (2012) at the Hollywood Film Festival, as well as “Best International Actress l” (IFTA Award) at the Irish Film and Television Awards (2013).
This is my suggestion for this month.