Two Days, One Night

Synopsis: One Friday morning, after recovering from a breakdown, Sandra (Marion Cotillard) is preparing to return to her job in a solar panel factory when she’s told that her work colleagues have voted to make her redundant so that they may still receive their bonuses. With two kids and a mortgage depending upon this second income, she and her husband (Fabrizio Rongione) are devastated. But her friend, Juliette (Catherine Salée) gets their boss to hold another vote on Monday morning. Sandra’s husband convinces her to use the weekend to visit each of her workmates in an effort to persuade them to give up their bonuses so that she may keep her job.

The Dardenne brothers’ doco-influenced approach to gritty, naturalistic narratives about the Belgian working class has twice seen them walk away from Cannes with the Palme d’Or, first in 1999 for Rosetta and again in 2005 for L’Enfant. Their new film is again focused on the lives of hard working Belgians, albeit with a highly contrived premise that enables them to explore their themes through a series of glimpses into the ‘doing-it-tough’ lives of a range of different characters.

Whilst this works well as a way of taking us into the home-lives of some of Sandra’s colleagues, allowing us to see how hard it is to keep body and soul together and to understand that it’s more than greed that motivates them to opt for the thousand Euro bonus, it’s also a device that quickly becomes repetitive. Essentially what we see is the same scene over and over; Sandra knocks on the door, explains that there will be another vote, implores them to understand her situation and to change their minds. What follows is generally one of two outcomes; either they explain what the bonus represents to them, telling her it’s not personal, or they feel ashamed and promise to support her come Monday morning. The content of their reply may differ, but the shape of these scenes is pretty much the same. The exception is the heartbreaking interaction between Sandra and the young father and soccer coach, Timur (Timur Magomedgadzhiev) who simply bursts into tears at the shame he feels for not supporting her.

What keeps us engaged, though, is the outstanding performance by Cotillard.  It’s a compelling and moving portrayal of a woman in crisis that is ably supported by the rest of the cast. What is less compelling is the journey Cotillard’s character takes us on. As her mission lurches back and forth between success and failure, so too does her state of mind as we watch her battle not to give in to the fragility and vulnerability that suggests her recovery is not as complete as she would have us believe. And this, for me, is where the film seems to turn a blind eye.

Without giving the game away, the impact of what we assume is her depression seems to be more of a convenient story element than an issue that deserves as much if not more examination, than do the social and political aspects. It’s this that makes the final scene feel, at best, overly simplistic and, at worst, implausible.

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