Saturday, January 24, 2015

MOVIE REVIEW: Two Days One Night (Deux Jours, Une Nuit)

In Two Days One Night, French superstar Marion Cotillard gave her best performance since she won the Oscar best actress as chanteuse Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose. She portrays Sandra Bya, a worker at the Solwal solar plant who after being hospitalized finds herself with no job after her co-workers opted to vote her out for a bonus instead.
But when Sandra was able to persuade the company's head Dumont (Baptiste Sornin) to go on a second ballot after she found out that their supervisor Jean Marc (Olivier Gourmet) persuaded the workers, she together with her loving husband Manu (Fabrizio Rongione in an affecting performance) reached out to her co-workers to vote for her over the weekend hence the title.
Cotillard with her sad eyes and frail frame is perfection as Sandra. You can't help but be sympathize for her as she talks to everyone on the ballot uncertain on the outcome. The best thing about Sandra is that her character can easily be made a saint/martyr but her bouts with depression, relying on the pills she takes only makes her human.
Directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne showed the other side of present time Europe which we don't see in the movies. The struggles of the working class and their individual response on how to face it make Two Days One Night a socially relevant movie to come out of the region yet a highly entertaining one due to it being a highly unpredictable suspense film anchored by Marion Cotillard's amazing performance.

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