Movie review: Marion Cotillard shines in The Immigrant

HEARTBREAK is always but a breath away in The Immigrant, an intense period drama that is as beautiful as it is bleak.

Director: James Gray (Two Lovers) / Starring: Marion Cotillard, Joaquin Phoenix, Jeremy Renner, Angela Sarafyan / The nightmare of an American dream

Three and a half stars / (M)

Heartbreak is always but a breath away in The Immigrant, an intense period drama as beautiful as it is bleak.

The year is 1921 and two Polish sisters have arrived by boat at Ellis Island, the famous New York check-in point for people looking to start a new life in America.

Magda (Angela Sarafyan) is immediately thrown in quarantine because of her cough, and could be deported pending a final ruling by authorities.

This leaves the older Ewa (Marion Cotillard) stranded in more ways than one. A well-dressed stranger offers his assistance. Ewa has no choice but to accept.

On set ... Joaquin Phoenix and Marion Cotillard in The Immigrant. Picture: Roadshow

Bruno (Joaquin Phoenix) runs a burlesque show on the Lower East Side. It is actually a front for a prostitution ring, but Ewa won’t finding that out until it is far too late.

Right now, money is needed fast, or Ewa and Magda will soon be banished back home.

After getting her bearings boarding with a friend of Bruno, Ewa reluctantly becomes a member of her new patron’s bare-all dance troupe.

Though there is a distinct unease to the relationship of Ewa and Bruno as it slowly develops, there is a clear connection as well. Each sees a little of who they might have been in the other, had life dealt them a better hand.

Moving ... Marion Cotillard in a scene from The Immigrant. Picture: Roadshow

However, there is nothing fair in the world depicted in The Immigrant. With the need to survive from day to day comes the demand for a compromise from which some sensitive people seen here — not just Ewa, it must be said — may never recover.

The soulful, yet steely performance of Cotillard — a world-class actor when circumstances permit — is
the best reason to check out
The Immigrant.

Her damaged chemistry with Phoenix (and also, in the movie’s best scenes, an underused Jeremy Renner as a manipulative magician) is a force unto itself.