**Spoiler Alert**
Director: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne/Starring: Marion Cotillard and Fabrizio Rongione
The Dardenne brothers' approach to film-making is unmistakably their own; unsentimental but heartfelt; cinematic but cinema verite'; fictional but so stubbornly and powerfully realistic. Their stories depict the struggles of the common man to survive in a world that is mostly unsympathetic to human need. For the Dardennes', if the struggles aren't always ennobling, characters at least manage to retain their dignity or achieve a redemptive end without fully freeing themselves from their condition or predicaments.
Dardenne plots are deceptively simple. Marion Cotillard plays Sandra, a wife and mother of two who has taken a leave of absence from her job due to her depression. Hoping to return to work, she learns her boss has offered her co-workers the opportunity to vote on what should be a sensitive issue: either accept a 1500 euro bonus ($1771.86 in American currency, to be precise), or sacrifice said sum so Sandra can keep her job. Though the bonus is the near-unanimous choice (only two of sixteen support her keeping her job), Sandra believes the boss has unfairly influenced her co-workers to vote against her. She then decides to spend her weekend making personal contact with her colleagues to persuade each to reconsider.
She and her husband Manu (Fabrizio Rongione), like most, face seriously diminished finances if she loses her job. The unappealing alternative is life on the dole; a ignominious and stultifying prospect Sandra wishes to avoid.
The straightforward, almost high-concept plot is a Dardenne Brothers specialty. But their narrative is hardly high-concept, for it is countered by the intricacies of human behavior, which become poignantly evident when Sandra approaches her co-workers.
As she struggles to locate the whereabouts of some fellow-employees, she is greeted by others at their front door. And as we might expect, their responses make for a fascinating and touching drama. We see that most are no better off financially than Sandra and are forced to work second jobs to maintain a modest way of life. Many count on the bonus to relieve their financial troubles. The wife of one co-worker informs her that 1500 euros pays for a year's worth of power and gas. While some reject her plea sympathetically, others dismiss her request un-equanimously. Some react unpredictably; in extremes that might leave one feeling amazed or horrified.
As Sandra's pessimism mounts, she begins to see how a favorable outcome might actually be a kind of defeat. She realizes that if the vote allows her to keep her job, her co-workers might resent her for being denied a windfall.
The stress and the disappointment, coupled with her pre-existing depression, prompt her own volatile behavior, which the Dardenne brothers dramatize without the crutch of melodrama.
I've always felt the Dardenne brothers could have been honorary Dogma 95 filmmakers. Not a shred of the unnatural finds its way into their aesthetic. You always get the sense they stumbled upon the action filming in a street or someone's home. Their unfestooned visuals, which compliment the raw, unromantic appearances of the characters, depict an indifferent, often pitiless world where the smallest, compassionate act seems like an event. And Sandra, ever the realist in her optimistic quest, always seems surprised and relieved to encounter empathy in some co-workers.
One can't help but feel sympathy for her co-workers, whose reasons for wanting to keep their bonuses are as valid as Sandra's desire to keep her job. Nothing is simple and every decision is fraught with consequences that aren't always beneficial to Sandra or her co-workers.
I probably don't really need to tout Marion Cotillard's performance. She is an actress with amazing depth and range and here--as French actors are wont to do--she expresses so much with her eyes; pain, despair and joy without broad, physical articulation. The Dardennes' always coax terrific, naturalistic performances from supporting actors and here is no exception.
I won't divulge the ending but defeat and victory manage to share dramatic space.
Two Days, One Night, zeroes in on the zeitgeist, making us feel an array of powerful emotions. In 90 minutes, the Dardennes' make us feel anguish for a woman whose monumental goal is merely to have a job. How that seemingly simple goal impacts her family and co-workers enriches the story and disabuses us of the notion that unemployment only victimizes individuals. The story should strike a universal chord but it probably carries a more visceral wallop in Europe, where stratospheric unemployment eclipses America's.
In Sandra's plight, we see a character display more heroism than all the clowns who take up screen space in the latest Hobbit movie, and one that is certainly more human. We also see how one weekend can have a devastating impact on one's life. A struggle that most newspapers might relegate to a paragraph on a back page is epic material for the Dardennes'. The World of Cinema should count itself lucky it has the singular perspectives of two very talented men.
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