Jacques Audiard’s Rust and Bone packed the first heavyweight punch of the Cannes race, starring Marion Cotillard as a killer-whale trainer who loses both legs in a tragic accident.

The first of three French directors in competition for the Palme d’Or top prize, Mr Audiard took home the runner-up Grand Prix from the Riviera festival in 2009 for the taut prison drama A Prophet.

His new film casts the Oscar-winning Cotillard opposite a little-known Belgian, Matthias Schoenaerts, as the barely-literate Ali, a drifter who lands with his young son in the sunny south of France.

The unlikely pair meet after a brawl at a club where Ali works as a bouncer. When she loses her legs, she finds solace in his unsentimental companionship, and inspiration from his physical courage as a bare-knuckle boxer.

Screened at a red-carpet premiere on Thursday, the movie drew what festival general delegate said was “one of the biggest standing ovations of recent years − huge”!

Set a stone’s throw from Cannes in Antibes, the film features a finely-drawn cast of characters pitted against powerful odds, be it physical mutilation or just the plain hardscrabble fight for existence. Both actors left audiences deeply impressed, with Britain’s Daily Telegraph praising “two towering performances in a film of genuine power,” which it rated four out of five stars.