Two Days, One Night ***** (2014, Marion Cotillard, Fabrizio Rongione) – Movie Review

Somehow, the glamorous and attractive Marion Cotillard submerges her own persona totally and makes herself effortlessly convincingly ordinary and even almost frumpy as Sandra, a mentally fragile youngish Paris suburban woman who has the weekend to convince her colleagues to give up their bonuses so that she can keep her job. If they don’t vote for her in Monday morning’s ballot, she’s out of the job that keeps her, her husband (Fabrizio Rongione) and family solvent and her self-esteem will be on the floor.

Cotillard’s acting work here is extraordinary, subtle, credible, compelling, in a part that’s loads more difficult than her Oscar-winning one as Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose (2007). It’s a complex portrait of a ‘real’ person with contradictions, who swings from despair to resolve, from anger to hurt, to acceptance to a kind of triumph, all in just 95 minutes.

The Belgian Dardenne Brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc, make an exquisite job of both the screenplay and the direction, setting not a single foot wrong ever. An attack on corporate greed that is so subtle you don’t even notice that’s what it is, it grips, engrosses and moves the audience to anger and tears.

The story can only have one of two endings – either Sandra keeps her job or she loses it. But the Dardenne Brothers keep you guessing till the end, and then manage to pull of a bit of a satisfying surprise you can’t second guess.

A critically acclaimed, totally accessible arthouse hit, Deux jours, une nuit is a real film again – and perfect with it. They took it to the Cannes Film Festival, where it was nominated for the Palme D’Or, but there were no awards. It won the Best Film prize at the Sydney Film Festival – ‘for its masterfully elegant storytelling, its dedication to a fiercely humanistic, super-realist worldview, its brave, essential commitment to community solidarity, and its celebration of a woman’s power and vitality’. Somebody got it right.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review

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