Marion Cotillard plays Sandra, a factory worker who finds out that she has effectively been voted into unemployment when her colleagues are given a choice between her staying with the company and them all receiving their bonuses. There's one last chance for her to keep her job, having convinced a manager that she would like to talk to the others who work alongside her and have another vote, a secret ballot, after the weekend. But can she make a strong enough case to sway people who may be relying on that income boost?
Co-written and co-directed by the Dardenne brothers (Jean-Pierre and Luc), Two Days, One Night is a film that manages to strike just the right tone throughout, navigating through an unhappy main premise without turning into something completely disheartening and miserable. The camera mostly stays alongside Cotillard, but it's an intimate shooting style, as opposed to an intrusive and uncomfortable one. There are many long takes, and no dramatic music underscoring things.
Cotillard is as excellent as she usually is in the lead role, a woman trying to fight her way beyond desperate sadness to make her stand with dignity. Her character knows that she is asking a lot of the people she works with, and she doesn't attack those who cannot be converted to her cause, but she keeps trying to persuade everyone who will be eligible to take part in the second vote. Everyone in the supporting cast is just as good, but the main secondary players I will praise are Fabrizio Rongione (playing Sandra's husband, Manu) and Catherine Salée (a friend named Juliette). Both act rightfully concerned, and both seem to have more faith than Sandra for much of the runtime.
What may be most interesting to viewers of Two Days, One Night is the deliberate way in which Sandra doesn't view her colleagues as The Enemy. There are some encounters that go a lot worse than others, and at least one person she tries to talk with is a reactionary asshat, but it's made clear that the ones to blame are those who made the company decision. It's the people who are unaffected by this big decision looking on (metaphorically, although sometimes literally) as the workers are made to wrestle amongst themselves about a decisions that wasn't ever necessary.
A saddening reminder that employers hold all of the power nowadays, and that people are often at the whim of others for reasons outwith their control, this is an effective lesson to those who want to take it in. From business to governments, the methodology has been the same for some time now. Create a bad situation, leave the workers to try and make the situation better for themselves, and reap the benefits while many people look around to blame anyone but the actual culprits
Very much worth your time though. After all, knowledge is power.
8/10
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