Deux jours, une nuit

"A woman is like a tea bag – you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water." - Eleanor Roosevelt

How many of us would fight as hard as Sandra (Marion Cotillard) to keep her job? I suppose we would try to keep it, but she has to convince a majority out of 16 fellow workers to vote her employment rather than their 1000 Euros bonuses. She journeys in this intense film like some mythical mariner to each island person to convince that they should vote for her.

Not only does Sandra experience a heavy dose of humiliation by virtually begging to be kept as an employee, she also has to deal with her insecurity and the accompanying dependence on drugs to help her through this challenge and her recent depression. The film's limitation is the repetition for each co-worker she visits, as if they just repeat the script for each visit. Even when one segment turns violent, it's as if writer/directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne injected action in an otherwise flat line of activity. Overall, the Dardennes further their thematic interest in socialistic causes.

What elevates this drama into Oscar consideration is Cotillard, dressed not like a movie star (see La Vie en Rose and Midnight in Paris) but a working girl, little makeup accompanied by sleeveless tees and serviceable jeans. Make no mistake; she still is one of the world's most attractive actresses, my current fav. However, here she is believable as a vulnerable mother grasping for her job that the family desperately needs to survive.

Yes, although she has a contributing husband, Manu (Fabrizio Rongione), he is unusually supportive, almost to a fault. Yet, dramatically, he's positioned well to keep her in the forefront. She's not Sally Field's Norma Rae, who fights for a union in her textile mill, because Sandra's cause is personal in the 21st century, where Norma's in the '70's is about collectivism. Both women, however, have an intelligence and wit to get them through. As far as I'm concerned, that's part of what feminism is about.

It's as low key and quiet as a film can get. It's not enhanced for comedy, action, or drama. Just a realistic human story of the basic struggle to make ends meet in this world.

It's the type of movie that separates the movie geeks from the film geeks.

As a film geek, I can appreciate how the filmmakers did so much with so little, especially actress,Marion Cotillard.

The movie counts on her being realistic, all the way down to the weight it looks like she lost in order to play a woman who just got over an illness, and in order to get her job back spends a weekend visiting her coworkers in order to convenience them to vote for her to get her job back in a secret ballet on Monday, over a big bonus they would all get if she stays laid-off. She had to be believable as a proud woman who did not want to ask her coworkers of this, she did not want their pity, but she needed to support her family, a situation all of her coworkers are also in. It's a truly unbalanced and unfair situation for everyone and Marion did an excellent job portraying how uncomfortable that is.

As a movie geek, though the movie was watered down with absolutely no sugar, I'm glad it was not boring. It helps that the subject is something almost everyone who has a job in this economy can relate to, no matter which side of the equation you're on.

Definitely the type of picture we'll all be discussing long after the film is over. '

This is my first Dardenne Bros film and at the end of this film I was like "I need to explore more of their films". This is a hard hitting slow story. It could be described as monotonous, but I would describe it as very very real. Following Marion's character, Sandra (la performance c'est très magnifique), we see the hardship of how a series of simple tasks turns into the hardest thing she has to do over the Two days and one night.

The Dardenne Bros and the Cinematographer Alain Marcoen used long shots, with very little cuts in certain scenes. At times whole scenes were just one shot. This left Sandra and Manu (Fabrizio Rongione) to hold the screen and make us believe what is going on and they did a great job with this. It allowed me to get into their emotions and into their lives of what they were going through. The lack of soundtrack also added that extra realism into the story.

I found this a heart wrenching and at times victorious film - a very good balance. The flow was great. It is slow, but just like Sofia Coppolo's Lost in Translation the slow-moving pace is necessary to tell the story.

I was able to get a ticket to this film at Festival de Cannes and it was received very well by the audience around us.

I'm off, now, to watch some more Dardenne Bros films!

I heard nothing about Two Days, One night before I decided to check it out on Netflix, and I must say that this is one of the best foreign films I have seen in a while. Actually it's just one of the best films I've seen in a while.

Two Days, One night tells us a story of a woman's desperate attempts to persuade her co-workers into making a very important decision that determines her future. The story focuses on human nature and our ability to give something up for someone we barely know. It feels incredibly intimate and human throughout and there were times where the emotions were so raw that I kept forgetting that I'm just watching a film. It felt so real and I really wanted to see this character succeed, mainly because her character was so well acted. The plot is very simple but there is a wavering sense of unpredictability and even tension as we watch this desperation-fueled journey unfold. The main plot line sets off many little strings of other interactions that I would never have saw coming, making this a unique and highly enjoyable first viewing.

The acting all around was fantastic. Our main character, played by Marion Cotillard, was emotionally broken and this actress did an amazing job showing it. She covered so much range in her performance that I simply could not keep my eyes off her, for more than just the obvious reason. She was excellently formed as we constantly see her entire demeanor and mannerism change after every character interaction. She reacted realistically in a way that made me feel very immersed within the film's story and narrative. I greatly wanted to see this character succeed at her goal, and if she had not been as well acted, I definitely would not have cared as much. Another great thing about Two Days, One Night, besides the excellent acting, is that we can all relate to it's personal and socially accurate storytelling.

Our character is seen asking many individuals to make quite a large sacrifice. The great thing is that we all know what this feels like. So we can place ourselves in the shoes of either character and feel incredibly attached to the story. This constant feeling of immersion and realism felt absolutely perfect and there was not one second where I felt like the film dragged or included an unnecessary scene. I enjoyed every second of it and I really didn't want it to end. But when that time did come, it felt extremely satisfying and understandable. There was no complex enigmatic riddle to solve or deep metaphor with infinite possible meanings to interpret. The ending was just as meaningful without any of these things.

I thoroughly enjoyed Two Days, One Night. It tells an interesting story that could very well happen to anyone. It was involving, emotionally raw, and just fantastically human.

Imagine trying to recover from depression only to discover that your illness was in danger of costing you your job; or worse, that in your absence your boss had asked your colleagues to vote for retaining you, or receiving their annual bonus. Imagine then having to visit those colleagues and beg them not to vote for you to lose your livelihood. This is the grim scenario for the Dardenne brothers' film 'Two Days, One Night', whose strength lies in the fact that nothing is presented in an overly melodramatic fashion: it's a simple, hard story of people doing what they have to do, as best as they are able. In a a way, it's also the film's weakness: in a moment of inner despair, the lead character overdoses, but it's so internalised that the incident is strangely quiet and unremarkable. But overall, the film is a telling exploration of the scope, and limits, of human solidarity; and the ending is a nice mixture of the positive and the realistic.