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Review: Two Days, One Night

★★★★☆
Four Stars

Marion Cotillard stuns as a woman fighting for her job, her mortgage and her sanity in the Dardenne brothers’ latest, Two Days, One Night,  a socially conscious drama of one woman’s struggle to return to work after a bout of depression. The film is terrifically acted and astutely observed, a morality tale pitting empathy and human connections against the pursuit of profit in a tidily constructed capitalist critique.

Cotillard has always excelled at playing characters caught between extremes – the professional highs and personal lows of Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose, the loss and recovery of her amputee whale trainer, Stéphanie in Rust and Bone – and here she excels herself, her Sandra capable of summoning a fierce determination which can collapse into a hopeless abyss without hitting a false note. It is a testament to Cotillard that Sandra’s polarised emotions never feel like two separate characters, with the performance anchored in a captivating brittleness. She holds the screen with every flicker of the eye, every twitch of a finger. We watch for any indicator that she’s about to break. It’s an incredibly restrained performance which somehow manages to tell us everything.

The film’s repetitive structure – Sandra must see her 16 co-workers individually throughout the weekend to convince them to sacrifice their bonus for her job – is systematic, designed to subject our protagonist to the same cruelties and social humiliations over and over again. Whilst this could have easily made for an unengaging narrative, the Dardennes turn the repetition into a virtue, with the film’s tapestry of repeated phrases and familiar arguments reappearing in new ways, showing us the gathering strength of our protagonist through their different applications.

Furthermore, the structure rarely feels too forced, as the richly drawn characters and human stories at the forefront of each interaction are so believable and engaging. Unfortunately, the truthfulness of the human stories fails to save the plot’s final twist from proving a contrivance too far. Whilst the twist engineers a satisfying resolution to Sandra’s emotional journey, its tidiness undermines a certain amount of the previously created realism by laying bare the machinations of the script.

The Dardennes wisely keep these blue collar character’s arguments pragmatic; the immorality of their decision is almost never debated, with the characters instead attempting only to weigh their needs against Sandra’s.The film’s naturalistic style, lacking a musical score or elaborate camerawork, provides little insight into Sandra’s internal life, instead offering us only the emotions Sandra allows to play across her face.

The depth of her emotional concealment often wrong foots the viewer, whose connection with her can be easily upended by an erratic turn in her behaviour, and yet the Dardenne brothers offer just enough to make Sandra engaging – she loves her children, needs to keep her house and wants to stay off the dole. This combination of distance and intimacy allow us to empathise with Sandra without viewing her bonus favouring colleagues as adversaries.

The almost faultless supporting cast use their scenes to flesh out the multitude of responsibilities pulling at their characters, even if a few actors fail to take us on a believable emotional journey.Through these people we experience the constant distractions of modern life. Everyone’s existence  is divided, their loyalties, their multiple jobs, their families. It’s there in the constantly ringing phone, in the blaring traffic, in the bass line of a distant radio, in a car’s wailing seat belt alarm. We feel these people’s exhaustion, even as we will them to endure more hardship.

The film is ultimately an examination of the human costs of a financial system which doesn’t account for them. It’s a hopeful portrait of a bleak situation. It’s wonderfully acted and delicately told. It’s a simple film about big things. It’s a film of highs and lows, and it’s absolutely worth the journey.

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