If you were hoping Two Days, One Night was the long awaited prequel to Six Days, Seven Nights, I’m sorry to disappoint you. (If you were hoping I wouldn’t make that joke, hey, what can I do? I’m Franchise Fred.) This Dardenne Brothers film is a mild drama about a labor vote at a French factory.
Sandra (Marion Cotillard) is fired when her colleagues vote to keep their $1000 euro bonuses rather than continue her employment. But, she is given the opportunity to have a revote on Monday morning, and spends the weekend talking to her 16 colleagues, essentially begging them to give up their bonus so she can keep her job.
She calls one colleague by phone but goes to see the rest in person, and it’s essentially the same conversation over and over again. Sandra knows what she’s asking. She doesn’t expect anyone to give up their bonus, and acknowledges when some may need the bonus more than she needs the job. We still sympathize with Sandra though, because even though we don’t expect anyone to give up their livelihood for us, we always hope that some of our friends might step up. When they do, it’s amazing, but no one’s entitled to that good fortune.
Writer/directors Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s script does a good job making each conversation unique, although none are surprising. It’s essentially every reaction you might expect. Some are sympathetic to Sandra, some are not, and some are downright hostile. It gets heated, for sure, but never quite reaches the juicy drama I was hoping they might mine out of this situation.
The scenario is highly relevant. Do we let someone go to keep the whole business running, or do we ask reliable veterans to take a cut to avoid firings. Dramatizing that on film is very much worthwhile, and getting to watch Cotillard perform it on all of our behalves is extraordinary.
Sandra does learn hints of office politics and the audience learns details of a condition she’s had as she talks to more people. Later on some of the earlier people call others before Sandra can get to them. That keeps it suspenseful, but it never quite approaches the greater issue. Do we as a society sacrifice to help all, or do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?
Those dramatic moments are handled very matter-of-factly, without commentary. Usually they play out in long takes so we can just live in the human moments. So that’s the kind of movie it is: human, honest, maybe not provocative. Human and honest is not nothing. The message movie version of this could have been unbearable.
When Two Days, One Night comes out, if I have to read ONE critic talk about how Cotillard de-glams… but then I’d be part of the problem too if I want to talk about how beautiful I think she still looks. I’m sure Cotillard and the Dardennes made their makeup and costume choices for artistic reasons that would be belittling to argue superficially. I still want to celebrate natural beauty though. She works at a factory, yet people who work in factories can be lovely. I’m still dealing with this myself, so I’ll get back to you on that. I loved her in the amputee movie too so I’ve been struggling with the issue of beauty and “de-glam” roles. I’m not going to figure it out any time soon.
Again, that’s in no way my takeaway from Two Days, One Night, just one thing it brought up and I wanted to address again. I appreciated the portrayal of a simple drama, not making it any bigger than it needed to be, though perhaps it could have been a bit deeper. Still, not a bad way to start my first Telluride.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
