Reframe: Two Days, One Night

The premise of the Dardenne brothers’ 2014 film, Two Days, One Night, is decidedly, and deceptively, simple. Sandra (the great Marion Cotillard) is a factory worker at a French solar panel plant who has been off work for an extended period due to a battle with depression. In her absence, the factory foreman puts a vote to Sandra’s co-workers: they can choose to lay Sandra off and collect a bonus of one thousand euros, or keep Sandra on and forgo the extra pay. Out of her sixteen peers, fourteen vote to lay Sandra off. However, Sandra and the factory’s head manager learn that the foreman intimidated voters against Sandra. Therefore, the manager gives Sandra the weekend to attempt to convince nine of the sixteen to support her on a second ballot. Sandra has two days and one night to change the votes of seven people to her favor.

Over the film’s 95-minute running time, we see Sandra do exactly that: knock on doors and make phone calls to save her job. Along with the depression Sandra suffers from, her family, which consists of her husband and two children, is living on a knife-edge in terms of financial stability. Losing her job would likely mean defaulting on her mortgage and the family returning to public housing. 

Two Days, One Night is not a plot-driven thriller. Sandra’s quest is anything but a dramatic roller coaster ride. It’s a small, quiet movie about life on the margins and the desire to maintain your dignity while also hanging onto your livelihood. It might have been easy to make the employees who voted against Sandra into villains, but the writing/directing team of Jeanne-Pierre and Luc Dardenne has no interest in cheap theatrics or easy answers. 

The Dardennes have been making movies together for nearly forty years, and every film shares the same hallmarks: extensive use of handheld cameras, natural lighting, no score, and prioritizing character over plot. Two Days, One Night is perhaps their grandest achievement, and certainly their most famous film. What makes Two Days, One Night unique in the Dardenne brothers’ oeuvre is the presence of Marion Cotillard. The Dardennes rarely work with movie stars, and never with an actor of Cotillard’s glamour and acclaim. 

Still, even with such a notable face at the center of the film, the Dardennes compromise nothing in their storytelling. As basic as Sandra’s journey might be read in synopsis, her story allows the filmmakers to hang numerous issues of import on the film’s slender plotline. Issues of fairness, mental health, class, workplace relationships, common decency, and most importantly, what it means to live paycheck to paycheck. As the gap between the rich and poor widens, and as anything resembling corporate loyalty to labor has become nonexistent, Two Days, One Night is even more relevant than it was at the time of its release.

All of the screenplay’s factors, themes, and the entirety of the film itself rest on Marion Cotillard’s slender shoulders. While Cotillard is certainly among the most beautiful women to ever walk the earth, she is also an extraordinary actress (she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for Two Days, One Night). By Dardenne design, Cotillard is given no makeup, her hair is that of a woman who doesn’t have the time or energy to concern herself with style, and her simple outfit of blue jeans and a pink tank top is her only costume. Of course, even with minimal accoutrements, Cotillard is still stunning, but the Dardennes’ dressing-down allows her to bring out all her skill and empathy in the role of Sandra.

Cotillard is in every single scene of Two Days, One Night, and she is unfailingly believable every second. Gifted with an expressive face and deep blue eyes that are surrounded by brown eyebrows and dark eyelids that offset her crystalline irises, Cotillard is every bit the distressed mother of two in the film. While she never raises her voice, her struggle to cajole her co-workers into taking up her cause is palpable with every encounter. 

Sandra knows the consequences of losing her salary are dire, but she doesn’t want to beg, either. As Sandra manages each conversation with her fellow workers, she comes from a place of understanding. She knows how much a one-thousand-euro bonus will mean to each of them. After all, they are all living in the same economic strata. Every encounter is a polite negotiation with a deep undercurrent of angst. Some of her discussions are met with a hard, but respectful “no.” Many of those who voted for the bonus are too cash-strapped to turn it down. They have families and their own pressures. As one co-worker points out, one thousand euros is a whole year of utilities. None of these people are buying boats or building onto their homes; they are thinking about keeping the lights on and the heat running.

Still, there are those who are swayed by Sandra’s plaintive lament. One man is so ashamed to have voted for her dismissal that he immediately, and tearfully, agrees to change his vote without even the slightest effort at coercion. Another peer points out that his belief in god must allow him to overcome the fear and browbeating he faces from the plant foreman, who has told several workers that if they don’t vote against Sandra, they might be next on the chopping block.

With every vote that Sandra turns in her favor, we see a mixture of fear and hope arise in her. Fear that she won’t get the nine votes she needs, but an even greater fear and knowledge that coming close and falling short will hurt even more. Sandra is most afraid of the one thing that keeps her moving forward: hope. 

As Sandra completes her rounds and awaits her fate that Monday morning as she arrives at the factory, we finally meet the foreman, Jean-Marc, who is every bit the callous, dishonest, and malevolent man he has been described as. The one thing Jean-Marc is not is cartoonish. The Dardenne Brothers’ view of the world does not allow for such unnecessary flair. The people in their films are those that we recognize, for good or ill, in our own lives on a day-to-day basis.

Two Days, One Night is another of their films about regular people in difficult circumstances. It’s also a film that sneaks up on you. When Sandra says her final words to her husband in the film, we realize she is not so ordinary after all. In fact, she’s among the best of us. The moment of peace she finds after learning her outcome is so simple and graceful that it is beyond description. As I said, Sandra is not ordinary at all.