Being laid off is a distressing and often humiliating experience. For Sandra (Marion Cotillard), the skinny, hollow-eyed heroine of Two Days, One Night, her recent firing from a small solar cell manufacturer was especially cruel. The company’s president put her fate to a vote, forcing Sandra’s co-workers to choose between her employment and their desperately-needed bonuses. She also suspects that some employees regarded her as unreliable due to her chronic depression. However, thanks to the efforts of husband Manu (Fabrizio Rongione) and friend Juliette (Catherine Salée), Sandra has one last chance to salvage her job. Late on a Friday afternoon, the boss consents to hold a new, secret ballot on the following Monday.
Over the course of a single weekend, Sandra must therefore persuade a majority of her co-workers to make a sacrifice for the sake of her livelihood. Given her susceptibility to fits of tearful self-loathing, one can understand why hiding beneath a blanket and Xanax haze might be preferable to such a task. Nonetheless, Sandra does undertake this degrading odyssey, trekking from house to house to make her case to co-workers who are alternately chastened, apathetic, and hostile.
Belgian writer-directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are ideally suited to such material, having long exhibited a fascination and tremendous affinity for authentic stories about modern social imbroglios. Two Days is the Dardennes at their best: rumpled, emotionally raw naturalism animated by an irresistible premise. As Sandra, Cotillard swerves from listless to ashamed to timidly hopeful in a way that is at once enthralling and utterly genuine. What’s more, the political dimensions of the Dardennes’ work have never felt more organically emergent than in Two Days, which presents all manner of quietly devastating commentary on capital, labor, and mental health (for starters). In short, it’s a spot-on triumph.
Two Days, One Night opens Friday, February 14 at Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema, 1701 South Lindbergh, 314-994-3733.
