— by Paula Treneer —
Deux Jours Une Nuit (Two Days One Night): Social realist drama shows Marion Cotillard at her finest
Orcas Island Film Fest
The gripping drama directed by Belgium’s Dardenne brothers features an ordinary woman played subtly but unglamorously by the beautiful Oscar award winner Marion Cotillard (for her La Vie en Rose portrayal of Edith Piaf). She plays Sandra, a Belgian factory worker who is laid off by a vote of her co-workers, forced to choose between her continued employment and their own bonuses by an unsympathetic profit-maximizing boss.
The two days, one night of the title are the time she is allotted to personally campaign with each of her colleagues before the vote is re-taken on a subsequent day. In addition to the realistic and sympathetic portrayals of a number of working-class characters who like Sandra are struggling financially, another major current of the film is Sandra’s recovery from depression, which occasioned the sick leave during which her bosses realized that the factory could manage with one less worker, and which is also subtly portrayed (is it possible to consume so much Xanax in the course of a day?).
The film is compellingly realistic but not entirely disheartening as many of Sandra’s colleagues prove themselves up to the financial sacrifice she must ask of each of them (although this film viewer found the vignette featuring one father-son duo’s reaction to Sandra’s request – thoughtful reflection by the older man, physical threats and a smack down of his father by the younger man – more realistic than the selfless solidarity of half of her co-workers). Probably my favorite film of the OIFF!
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