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January 11, 2015

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Home » Sunday » Film

Film drives home life’s realities

By Jocelyn Noveck | January 11, 2015, Sunday | Print Edition

PUT yourself in my place.” It’s a line heard a number of times in “Two Days, One Night,” the exquisitely simple and moving new film from Belgium’s Dardenne brothers.

It’s central to the story, but doesn’t the line also encapsulate what cinema is supposed to accomplish, essentially? Forcing us to put ourselves in the place of those on screen and to wonder, often with discomfort: What would I do?

Not all filmmakers pull it off, but it’s something Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are remarkably good at. They make us understand just what we share with their characters, working-class people in industrial Belgian cities who are just ordinary folk trying to get by.

And their effort is even more remarkable here, because the writer-directors are working for the first time with a bona fide, glamorous movie star: Marion Cotillard. The fact that it works so well is a tribute both to Cotillard’s committed, selfless work and to the Dardennes’ unerringly authentic instincts.

Cotillard plays Sandra, a mother of two young children who works at a solar panel factory. It’s significant that we never see Sandra actually doing her work. It doesn’t matter. Over the course of the film we’ll learn just how important that work is — not simply to her economic survival, but to her very identity and sense of place in the world.

The action unfolds at a deliberate pace. Only gradually do we realize Sandra has been on a medical leave for depression. As the film begins, we know only that she’s been hit with a severe blow: The boss has determined that 16 workers can perform the job of 17, with a little overtime. Her fellow workers have been given a choice — a 1,000-euro bonus (US$1,200), or Sandra’s return. They’ve voted for the money.

But Sandra wins a second chance: A new ballot, on Monday morning. All she has to do is persuade a majority of the 16 to give up their bonus. She has, as the title says, two days and one night.

With the help of a supportive husband (Fabio Rongione), Sandra heads out to knock on doors. Each encounter is painful. Sandra is a mass of jangled nerves, prone to popping Xanax or escaping to bed. She hardly feels capable of arguing for her economic survival.

The Dardennes don’t make it easy for her, and they don’t make it easy for us. No shortcuts are taken. The finale is redemptive, yes, but not in the way you expect. As we watch Sandra trek off down yet another urban pathway, growing smaller as the world grows bigger, we’re struck in a very visual sense how her story is just one of many, equally powerful ones — in her town, in her country, in the world at large. Few filmmakers drive this universality home as well as the Dardennes.

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