Review of Two Days, One Night (2014) by Nonofyour B — 27 Dec 2014

ARTLESSLY ARTFUL - My Review of TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT (4 Stars).

Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have long been passionate about social realism. It oozes out of the handheld camerawork and Italian Neo-Realism aesthetic. Their documentary-style approach rarely yields great shots. Rather than marveling at a sun-dappled frame of our hero posed just-so, you may instead become transfixed by what amounts to a commitment to credibility.

Such is very much the case with their latest film, TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT, starring Academy Award Winner, Marion Cotillard as Sandra. Already dealing with severe depression, Sandra's world is turned further upside down when she learns her co-workers have voted to let her go in order to secure their annual bonuses. Begging for another vote, she is given a weekend to track down her 16 associates in an attempt to change their minds come Monday morning.

I braced myself for a long slog, trying to imagine how the Dardennes could possibly shorthand each encounter so that we wouldn't have to hear Sandra explain her plight every time. Interestingly enough, that exact repetition is partly where this intensely emotional film gets its power. This is not meant to take anything away from Ms. Cotillard, who is raw, subtle and completely believable from first moment to last. What a year she has had with her turn-of-the-century, silent movie evocation in THE IMMIGRANT to this, a personification of a modern woman coping as best she can with a very real, very current economic dilemma.

Encouraged by her husband (a warm performance by Fabrizio Rongione) to go door-to-door in order to sway a majority of her co-workers to vote to keep her, Sandra's arduous task is fraught with minutiae usually left out of such ticking clock scenarios. The Dardennes aren't after suspense, they're after putting the audience right in harm's way with their protagonist. In lesser hands, we would cut to each scene in the middle to avoid the same exposition, but the Dardennes want you to know just how tough this is on Sandra.

Each encounter either uplifts or wrecks her, and the cumulative effect is quietly devastating. Some are intensely sad, such as her scene with a soccer coach (Timur Magomedgadzhiev), whose surprising reaction is one of the most beautiful scenes you'll see in a movie all year. Just when you think people are inherently good, others strike out verbally and/or violently, condemning Sandra for daring to ask them to make such an impossible choice. The cumulative effect acts as a microcosm of our society, and how tough times have caused some people to lose their humanity, or perhaps simply exposed what was already missing. Every reaction takes its toll on our heroine, whose mental condition is tenuous at best already.

I believed every second of this film. Cotillard is incapable of giving a bad performance, and this may be her greatest achievement to date. She eschews those showy moments other actors hunger for in favor of the quiet, uncomfortable, hopelessly scared person she's embodying. I mean this as a compliment of the highest order in saying that had I not known she was an international movie star, I would have been convinced that this film was a documentary.

With the push-pull of hopefulness and dread from scene to scene, I couldn't imagine the Dardennes finding a happy ending. Without spoiling anything, they've written a climax of such complexity and inevitability, the moment felt perfect and right. I cared for Sandra and the people she affected and applaud the Dardennes for finding the exact right place to end this tough, riveting, highly relevant film.