Two Days, One Night explores complex characters

When the Academy Awards announced the nominees for Best Actress in a Leading Role, a name that had not yet been recognized in this year’s major awards season appeared: Marion Cotillard.  After winning the same category for the French film La Vie en Rose in 2007, she is now nominated for her role as a depressed factory worker in Two Days, One Night.

The Belgian film, written and directed by brothers Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, follows Cotillard’s character Sandra, a lower-middle class mother working in a solar panel factory in order to support her family in an industrial, French-speaking part of Belgium.

After Sandra discovers that her fellow employees have been coerced into voting for her dismissal in return for company-wide bonuses, she and her husband decide to visit each employee in the span of “two days and one night.”

The couple hopes to convince the factory workers to vote in Sandra’s favor during a second ballot. As the narrative unfolds, we uncover Sandra’s history with depression and the true reasoning behind her colleagues’ decision to let her go.

With a seemingly improbable plotline — despite the film having been inspired by a real-life event that occurred in France — Two Days, One Night has the potential to be overly specific and alienating, especially to its international audiences.

However, the Dardenne brothers manage to create a universal and thought-provoking film that explores humanity without being sappy.

Witnessing themes of sacrifice and devotion, the audience is inclined to deeply consider what their own reactions would be in this type of situation and are forced to deliberate the morality of the decisions made by the film’s various characters.

Although the extended takes of Sandra speaking to each of her coworkers individually and her attempts to convince them to forgo their potential bonuses feels repetitive at times, this element of the film only increases the audience’s empathy for Sandra and her family.

The audience is forced to repeatedly witness her desperate, and at times degrading, pleas for her job.

Another strong point of the film is in its intimate portrayal of multi-dimensional characters, a look — at times uncomfortable or unnerving — at how human beings interact in private moments between spouses, friends and family.

We quickly discover that Sandra is not the perfect protagonist. While she is determined, this often wavers as her weakness creeps through, and she spirals back into her addiction to Xanax.

Meanwhile, her husband, Manu (Fabrizio Rongione), acts as a voice of reason and support, while also attempting to cope with his own struggles within his marriage and finances.

Unlike more traditional films, there isn’t a complete transformation of character from beginning to end — Sandra does not suddenly become extremely confident or forceful, but rather gains a new perspective on her life and develops in a way that is more realistic.

While it is powerful on its own, the film would have undoubtedly suffered without Cotillard’s ability to engage the audience with her composure on the screen and subtle yet expressive movements. Even as she clunks around in baggy jeans and a hot pink tank top, viewers follow her without question and remain in awe of her sense of poise and presence.

There are several close-ups throughout that would feel excessive if not for Cotillard’s ability to make each moment she has on screen crucial to her character’s journey, both physical and emotional. Through her transparent blue-grey eyes the audience can read every nuance of her character’s strife as she stares out the smudged windows of the village bus.

Compared to the roles of her fellow nominees, Rosamund Pike’s psychotic Amy in Gone Girl or Reece Witherspoon’s drug-addict-turned-hiker Cheryl Strayed in Wild, Cotillard’s character is one of restraint and a near constant anxiety that sees the actress either suppressing or secretly releasing tears for a significant amount of the film. Rather than scenes smothered in violence or outlandish sentiment, we witness an internal struggle between fragility and perseverance. This is a difficult task that Cotillard conquers with a seemingly effortless grace.

While it is unlikely that she will win for this performance, especially considering she was not nominated for a SAG award which usually indicates one’s chances in the Academy Awards, Cotillard has once again proven in Two Days, One Night that she is a uniquely powerful actress and deserves to appear among this year’s strong list of nominees.