Two Days, One Night | Jean-Pierre Dardenne + Luc Dardenne | NYFF 2014
Would you take a bonus for more money if it meant that one of your fellow employees would lose their job? What would you do if you were the employee whose job is put at the mercy of your fellow co-workers? That’s the question that Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne ask in Two Days, One Night.
The captivating French film follows Sandra (Marion Cotillard), a worker at a solar panel factory called Solwal. She had to take a leave of absence due to a nasty battle with depression. Unfortunately for her, the company realizes that they can manage just fine with one less employee. So in a cruel move, they offer up a vote. They can opt to take a 1,000-euro bonus, or they can forfeit it and let Sandra keep her job. Before the film starts they voted in favor of the bonus, but we learn that their boss Jean-Marc (Olivier Gourmet) may have intimidated the workers, swaying the vote unfairly.
Sandra is able to convince a boss to allow for another secret-ballot after the weekend because of Jean-Marc’s influence on the last vote. So she’s forced with the nearly impossible task of trying to convince her co-workers of giving up their bonus in order for her to keep her job. Her depression almost prevents her from even trying, but her husband Manu (Fabrizio Rongione) keeps by her side and pushes her to fight for her job. The rest of the film is Sandra going from house to house, asking each co-worker if they’ll sacrifice the money so she can keep her job. All she needs is the majority, but that of course is much easier said than done.
The Dardenne’s keep it simple, but bring up difficult questions. When do the needs of others became more important than your own? Sandra stares humanity straight in the face and tries to see if empathy can beat out greed. But in some of the workers cases, they too genuinely need the money to get by, but then again, so does Sandra. She has a tough task to complete, and it doesn’t make it any easier that she has to do it while battling depression.
The film is about Sandra, and we follow her every step in the way. This requires the world of Marion Cotillard, but thankfully she’s one of the best actresses going at the moment, and handles it without fault. In fact, it’s one of the best performances of the year. Cotillard’s Sandra is vulnerable, forced to fend for herself in a world of self-doubt. It’s a very human performance, and Cotillard is exceptional. Between this and The Immigrant, Cotillard had two very award worthy performances in 2014.
The Dardenne brother prove with this refreshing tale that you don’t need giant explosions or an overstuffed story to make a captivating film. You just need to make a movie that connects with the human sprit in some way, and Two Days, One Night does so blissfully well.
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