Two Days, One Night is a rarity in cinema. It’s a film about life’s small but nonetheless significant victories and losses, the real, and unromanticised drama that we face in daily life.
Marion Cotillard plays Sandra, a woman who, on returning to work after taking leave to treat her mental illness, is notified she’s been made redundant. In her absence, her 16 co-workers were instructed, because of cuts, to either to vote to keep her employed, or vote for a bonus. Just as Sandra begins to sink into despair, a friend calls, and tells her that she has grounds for the vote to be recast. Her boss agrees, and so Sandra spends her weekend – two days, one night – visiting the houses and after-hours workplaces of her colleagues, pleading with them to reconsider.
What the Dardenne brothers have crafted with Two Days, One Night is a fascinating little parable; one that aches to be unpacked, just as it floods you with worry for the pain Cotillard’s terrific Sandra will shortly face. But Sandra’s got it; though she’s suffering, she’s wonderfully strong, completely realistic about the terrible proposition she’s bringing to her co-workers. House by house, she’s gracious, exhausted, mortified by her task, brought to tears by the support she receives from some, hurt by others she considered friends, taunted by petty workplace bureaucracy, and haunted by her depression, ever lingering in the wings.
In cinemas.
