Penniless and uneducated, Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts, from the impressive Rundskop) leaves the north of France with his five-year-old son to move in with his sister and brother-in-law in their humble home in Antibes. After finding work as a bouncer, this strong and quiet man who boxes in his spare time meets the charming Stéphanie (Marion Cotillard) after a brawl on the dance floor. Some time later, as Ali takes part in illegal fights to make money, he meets the former orca trainer again, but now she's a paraplegic, having lost her lower legs in a terrible accident...

After two unrelenting dramas, the superb De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté and Un prophète, Jacques Audiard returns with a melodrama about two people battered by life: a former beauty destroyed by paraplegia and a beast better able to communicate with looks and blows than with words. Very moving, especially as destiny and the screenwriters hammer away at the circumstances of these two characters.