Review of Two Days, One Night (2014) by Christopher Llewellyn R — 30 Jan 2015

From the great fraternal Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne ("L'enfant") - perpetually interested, it seems, in high-stakes stories about working-class and underclass characters in crisis - comes a new film that is one of the best treatments of the challenges faced by modern-day worker bees that I have seen. Starring Marion Cotillard ("La Vie en Rose"), nominated - for this film - for a 2015 Best Actress Oscar, the film is a brilliant portrait of a woman, Sandra, at the end of her rope, thanks to a cruel decision taken by her boss vis-à-vis her employment status. Through her struggle to retain her job - and her dignity as a human being - she discovers previously unknown reserves of strength within herself that compensate - up to a point - for her lost job.

As the film begins, Sandra is about to return to work at Solwal, a Solar Panel company from which she has been away - on medical leave - for four months. She has just recovered from a bout of severe clinical depression, but is now healthy (enough). So when she gets a phone call on a Friday from a co-worker, Juliette, informing her that her boss just offered the other Solwal employees a choice between receiving their end-of-term bonuses or keeping her, Sandra, on the payroll, and that the vote (not surprisingly) did not go in her favor, she is (understandably) devastated. As we learn, she and her husband (and two kids) have only recently moved out of social-welfare housing, and the loss of Sandra's salary will throw them back into their old situation. But Juliette is a woman on a mission, and drags Sandra to meet the boss, convincing him to allow another vote on Monday. This one will be done via secret ballot, and without the foreman present. Sandra therefore has the weekend - the "two days, one night" of the title - to wage a door-to-door campaign to woo her co-workers to vote in her favor. It's a nasty deal - she is asking people in no better financial situations than her to give up money they feel they've earned - and would be hard enough for someone in great mental health. For Sandra, it threatens to undo her recovery.

Fortunately, she has an extremely supportive husband, Manu - played wonderfully by Dardenne regular Fabrizio Rongione ("Rosetta") - who understands that the only possible way Sandra will become whole again is by fighting for her job (and dignity). Sure, they need her salary, but he, himself, needs her once more present as both mother and wife. Not only are both Cotillard (who spends much of the movie hunched over and physically weighed down by her burdensome task) and Rongione individually spectacular, but they are marvelous together, and completely believable as a long-term couple. It's them against the system, and though the system may not care, we do. To see at all costs.