Quvenzhané Wallis gives her director Behn Zeitlin a big hug.

The red carpet was aglow with the incandescent twinkle of Hollywood’s stars on Monday night at the 22nd annual Independent Film Project Gotham Awards. With Oscar winners Matt Damon and Marion Cotillard amongst the evening’s honorees and the likes of Jack Black, Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, John Krasinski and so many more blazing a trail through the double doors of Wall St.’s Cipriani’s, it was no wonder that the less glamorous side of the velvet rope was a veritable press feeding frenzy. Lucky for us, then, that we had sharpened our claws.

As the guests took their seats for the ceremony, The Observer was whisked upstairs to a private viewing room, lest we cavort too rambunctiously with the delicate A-List crowd. There we watched over the evening’s events like demi-gods looking down from the heavens upon the cherubs pecking away at their meals, with eight year old nominee Quvenzhané Williams and 13 year old Jared Gilman leading the underage coterie.

The awards soon got underway, much to the delight of the recipients. Honoring their intentions as champions of independent cinema, the jury not only rewarded the biggest Hollywood names but the industry’s up-and-comers for their contribution to film. Beasts of the Southern Wild writer and director Benh Zeitlin was undoubtedly the big winner of the night, scooping statuettes – well, glass cuboids - for Breakthrough Director alongside the Bingham Ray Award, dedicated to the late film executive.

Mr. Zeitlin was so swept up with his first victory, however, that he scarcely noticed he had procured a second, pausing in his role as the obliging interviewee only to dash back downstairs to claim his newest prize.

“The fact that the film has gotten out into the world has been overwhelming,” he told The Observer, “And I never imagined this many people would not only see it but champion it, and make it their business to help the film get out there. It has completely changed my life.” A spate of critical successes at Cannes, Sundance, the LA Film Festival and the International Film Festival has seen Louisiana-based Mr. Zeitlin’s awards cabinet go from empty to engorged in a matter of months.

Another director honored for his work during the event was David O. Russell, whose work on the likes of The Fighter and new release Silver Linings Playbook secured his status as a deserving IFP Gotham Award recipient. "With an independent film you are with your little family and you work together all day every day, and that’s the real difference," he explained. "You’re all there for the passion, and I prefer that because projects have to come from the heart. You have to dig deep."

Academy Award-winners and Gotham honorees Mr. Damon and Ms. Cotillard are certainly no strangers to widespread acclaim, but both seemed similarly touched by their newest prestigious accolade. Ms. Cotillard was every inch the elegant belle of the ball, dazzling in an array of Chopard jewelry and a stunning Christian Dior couture gown.

Clearly her nationality influences not only her wardrobe but her passion for various projects, telling The Observer: “I really cherish the fact that I’m able to share my French movies worldwide, because we have amazing creativity in France.” The softly spoken actress, who stars in the recently released Rust and Bone, seemed quite overcome with emotion, before continuing: “With this film I had one of the greatest journeys ever, and to share this very unconventional love story outside of my country is something that I enjoy more than anything. I never choose a movie because of whether it’s independent or not, it’s just a story that’s got to take me. But independent movies have the freedom of telling stories that nobody except a special director would tell.”

Mr. Damon echoed the Parisian sweetheart’s sentiments, divulging, “I’ve never set goals for my career. Each movie is just story-telling, and I never wanted to not do a bunch of good movies because I was waiting to make a great one.”

The evening was particularly poignant for the actor, who recalled his first attendance at the Gotham Awards some 15 years earlier in the year Good Will Hunting was released. The best-buddy-Ben-Affleck spot was filled not by his usual partner in crime, but by Mr. Krasinski, who became fast friends with the honoree after meeting on the set of The Adjustment Bureau, in which Mr. Damon and Mr. Krasinski’s wife Ms. Blunt, starred. The Observer did contemplate asking whether Mr. Damon’s onscreen dalliance with his friend’s spouse ever induced some awkward glances around the dinner table, but we opted to forgo stirring the salacious pot on this occasion.

Back to the matter at hand, Mr. Damon said he enjoyed the ubiquitous montage of his roles over the years, but revealed, “It’s always a little cringe inducing – if you have a bad or mediocre day at work, it’s alive forever, so that part [of working in film] is always a little weird.”

But Mr. Damon, who plays the lead in upcoming indie flick Promised Land, needn’t worry about bad days at the office, given that his most recent prize was for Lifetime Achievement – at the grand old age of 42. “I hope this is like a buoy marker – a half time thing,” he laughed. “I want to do this for another 50 years!”

And with that, our time with Mr. Damon was up, and he was briskly shepherded to the after party with the rest of his showbiz pals. Alas, we did not get the opportunity to put on our dancing shoes and join in the film festivities, but the evening was quite the show itself.

Cotillard in Rust and Bone.

Proving again that her Best Actress Academy Award for playing Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose was no fluke, the marvellously sensual Marion Cotillard, with her wounded doe eyes and look of permanent unfulfilled longing, delivers another kidney punch as a double amputee in love with an illegal bare-knuckle fighter in the French shocker Rust and Bone. Her move to Hollywood was understandable, anxious as she must have been to parlay her 2008 Oscar into a major career development. But so far her unique gifts have been largely wasted in stupid American films like Inception and Contagion. Woody Allen knew what to do with her in Midnight in Paris,but for the most part she’s been forced to work far below her talent level. I’m glad she returned to France for acclaimed filmmaker Jacques Audiard (A Prophet). His blend of measured sips of taut narrative and a detailed visual style brings out Ms. Cotillard’s poignancy. Rust and Bone addresses today’s trendy theme of sex and the disabled with fresh vision, but unlike the runaway hit The Sessions,it does so with a desperate need for wider audience accessibility and considerably less tenderness.

When this movie premiered at September’s Toronto International Film Festival to largely indifferent reviews, one wag commented that “not since Orca has a movie given killer whales such a bum rap.” That’s a funny line, but although I chuckled, I lamented the fact that such a withering dismissal missed the point of the picture entirely. In Rust and Bone, the haunting Ms. Cotillard plays Stephanie, an emotionally hijacked woman who works as a trainer of whales at a Marine World tourist attraction on the French Riviera, connecting with the humongous creatures on a level she cannot reach with humans. During a horrific accident on the job, she is left without legs—embittered, unemployed and without focus. While she negotiates a slow, clouded recovery to learn how to walk again with prostheses, braces and crutches, Stephanie meets Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts), a homeless drifter and hulking brute who lives with his estranged sister, a supermarket cashier, in a cramped apartment, and supports his neglected 5-year-old son by working as a bouncer and waging bets on street brawls he fights with his bare fists. An uneasy, often challenging relationship ensues, in which writer-director Audiard and co-writer Thomas Bidegain rummage through the detritus of two lost souls who try to save each other from hell and find both pain and solace in their awkward attempts to commit. Even though her character is never fully explored, Ms. Cotillard is heartbreaking, and she is evenly matched in every scene by co-star Mr. Schoenaerts, the vulnerable battering ram fresh from his breakout triumph in last year’s Bullhead. Although their chemistry does more for the familiar “achingly sad girl meets immorally damaged pugilist” storyline than any of Mr. Audiard’s trademark impressionistic camera work, the stylish cinematography is undeniably impressive. But Rust and Bone is still a very depressing piece of work, and at two hours, it’s much too long, sapped by too many extraneous scenes that slow the pace at the wrong times. There’s also a minimalistic shortness of breath in the dialogue that leaves one wanting more, and a bloody, pulverizing final fight scene so ghastly and violent you might not be able to watch it. Mr. Audiard has style galore, but he suffers from the same elephantiasis of the ego as almost all of the current American directors. He doesn’t know how to improve his work with judicious cutting. I’d like to present him with a pair of sharp scissors and show him how to use them on Rust and Bone.

rreed@observer.com

RUST AND BONE

Running Time 120 minutes

Written by Jacques Audiard,
Thomas Bidegain and Craig Davidson (story)

Directed by Jacques Audiard

Starring Marion Cotillard,
Matthias Schoenaerts and Armand Verdure

Marion Cotillard chatting away.

Just when we were sick and tired of cinema screenings and movie premiere parties (Hello nomination-baiting season!), The Cinema Society alongside Dior and Vanity Fair hosted one of its best shindigs yet, at the legendary Indochine restaurant following a showing of the Rust and Bone, Jacques Audiard’s 2012 French-Belgian film, which stars Marion Cotillard and dizzyingly sexy Matthias Schoenaerts.

“I’m gonna need eight glasses of Champagne to lift myself up from that one!” one power publicist bellowed to The Observer over the roaring crowd.

“But Marion Cotillard was just amazing!”

This writer unfortunately missed the screening in order to support wounded U.S. servicemen and women uptown for Stand Up For Heroes event, which featured performances by John Mayer, Roger Waters and Bruce Springsteen.

We were hoping for a sighting and perhaps to bavarder with the Oscar-winner.

"Marion had to immediately catch an international flight," one social stalwart dutifully informed us. Of course she had plenty of time to pose for the cameras in her Dior couture, flashing her wondrous baby-bump.

Those that did turn out for the Indochine post-bash made the night memorable. Mischievous attendees included Harley Vieira Newton, Jean-Marc Houmard, Katie Lee, Nan Bush and Bruce Weber, Stefano Tonchi, the mouthy Amy Sacco, Isiah Whitlock and Donna D'Cruz, who off-duty on the DJ gig for the evening.

“I think it’s the food!’ suggested a male model, whose name escaped us.

“These mushroom things and the filet mignon!” he raved between bites.

We schmoozed with model Johannes Huebl and admired Ellen von Unwerth dancing skills. An attempt to question Emma Watson about the premise of the film resulted in a chic pout; her smart phone was of more interest.

The film, which takes place in Antibes, we were told, follows a young man who develops a bond with a whale trainer and traces how their relationship intensifies after a tragic accident. It won critical acclaim at Cannes and the BFI Film Festival. So we shall see how it plays with American audiences. It is en Français.

We got a few words with the Belgian star, Matthias Schoenaerts, but most of it was in Flemish… “I am very excited about the film,” was about all our infantile Nederland skills could reward us.

Nonetheless, the night was about celebration and good vibes. Signature Belvedere cocktails like the Rust and Bone mojitos kept conversation lively and bodies loose until well after midnight.

We told the host of evening and The Cinema Society founder, Andrew Saffir that this was our favorite fête of his thus far. He was unfazed and just smiled politely. With that, we were off to Norwood to continue our foolish, but fabulous escapades.