Two Days, One Night
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Belgian filmmaking brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne are known for forging films about people at the fringes of society – the immigrants, the homeless, the invisible who live amongst us. Their latest film, Two Days, One Night, is a profoundly affecting account of the day-to-day struggles faced by the working class. The film’s heroine is a woman fighting for her job at a small-town Belgian solar panel plant. Though this may not sound particularly enticing, Two Days is a heartfelt, unconventional thriller that will leave you reveling in the quiet wonders of mediocrity.
Marion Cotillard plays Sandra, a mother of two who has just returned to her job after a medical leave to battle depression. During her absence, an ultimatum was posed to her co-workers: receive their annual €1,000 bonus or dismiss Sandra from her job. When the possibility of an official re-vote surfaces, Sandra’s only hope is to persuade the majority of her 16 co-workers to forgo their bonus by Monday. With her husband Manu (Fabrizio Rongione) urging her to “fight for [her] job,” our heroine hauls herself out of bed and onto a weekend-long journey across the city to plead her case to colleagues she barely knows. We are swept up in Sandra’s fight against time through apartment complexes and soccer fields, and the ticking of the clock locks you in a choke-hold of suspense.
We soon realize that Sandra is not the only victim in this film. As she goes from door to door, we are briefly let into her colleagues’ lives. Some are sympathetic, others refuse her outright, but all have struggles of their own. This is the root of the audience’s central dilemma: who, then, is the villain? All of her colleagues have their own battles to fight, many working weekend jobs to make ends meet. By the last visit, it is still unclear whether we can consider those who refuse Sandra’s pleas to be our archetypal antagonists. We have, however, learned to predict from a glance at the doorstep how each person voted in the first round. The plot is riddled in suspense every time someone calls Sandra back as she walks away and we pray for a change of heart.
Cotillard is beyond deserving of her nomination for Best Actress at the upcoming 2015 Academy Awards. It’s one of her best performances to date; she is magnificent as a fatigued woman who possesses both a quiet strength and piercing fragility. Through the film, she dons blue jeans and tank tops, unkempt hair and sunken eyes. Though she is a bonafide, Oscar-winning A-lister, there is not a moment where it feels as though she is pretending to be someone she is not; Marion is Sandra, a woman in recovery who continues to pop Xanax like breath mints when overwhelmed by tribulation.
Two Days, One Night is an intimate story about an ordinary disaster. There is no nonsense, only brutal honesty and simplicity so that the film barely feels like fiction. It’s interesting to note that there is no score in the film. The only music comes when Sandra and her husband sing along to the radio in their car, a brief nirvana in her heavy, draining odyssey. It is 95 minutes that focus on the details of people and place, and shines light on the harrowing effects of depression.
At one point, Sandra remarks to her husband, “I’m invisible.” Indeed, the film begins with a woman who is so lost in her despair that she has become invisible even to herself. But through glimpses of love, courage, struggle, and even disappointment, she regains her strength. Whether she earns the majority of the vote on Monday doesn’t matter; she has already won.
As a part of the Art Gallery of Hamilton’s “i <3 filmseries,” Two Days, One Night will be playing at Jackson Square on Feb. 25 at 7:00 pm.
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