Review: Deux Jours, Une Nuit/Two Days, One Night

10th June 2014

This is the latest film from the Dardenne brothers which was just shown as part of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.

The film follows Sandra (Marion Cotillard) married to Manu (Fabrizio Rongione) as she tries to persuade her work colleagues in one weekend to give up their €1,000 bonus in order to save her job.

It is an interesting premise for a film: how many people in the current financial climate would give up their annual bonus that they have worked and voted for in order to save their colleague’s job who has just come back from a long term sick leave after severe depression. It has to said that whilst €1,000 may not seem a lot for the workers at the solar panel manufacturing plant that they all work at it is a small fortune.

The interactions between Sandra, who is struggling to manage her depression and find the courage to persuade her colleagues to give up their bonus so that she can keep her job is deftly presented on scene. Her struggle is mirrored by her colleagues’ own struggle between keeping the money they have rightly earned and in most cases battling their own internal moral code.

However, whilst the gritty subject matter coupled together with the natural lighting of this film is excellently executed. The film does rest squarely on the shoulders of Marion Cotillard and her version of a nuanced performance. As a depressed victim she plays the character well but her interactions with the actors playing the roles of her colleagues is a little formulaic but maybe that is all part of the what the film is getting at. It is not about the ending but the struggles that she has to overcome to get there and the all too real moral quagmire that individuals face in today’s workplace.

Definitely a film that will have you discussing the “what if” this was happened in my workplace and noting the Dardenne brothers as the French equivalent of Ken Loach with this gritty, social commentary of a film.

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