Two Days, One Night

“Why is she so worried about her situation when she could just get a new job,” we keep wondering in relation to the protagonist’s overdramatic behavior. And then we understand that rather than trying to keep her job, she wanted to… And the film becomes a valuable sociological study of the difficult life of one particular mortal woman. Marion Cotillard is brilliant in this. (07/25/2017)

The problem starts with the source material, based on the fact that the Docent of Evil at the head of this blah blah company, while scratching a Persian cat with a necklace, thought he'd fundamentally mess with his employees' weekend laziness by assigning them ethics and morality homework for Monday. Either they kick the ass of the incompetent Marion Cotillard, whose psychiatrist is, in my opinion, not exactly in the right place, or they get to keep their sizable annual salary bonus. That might at least add some balls to the next teambuilding. This starting point isn't that bad a priori, but it doesn't match the cancerously earnest treatment (btw, except for the last two points, Dogma cut and dried) without an ounce of perspective, which proves once and for all that a faithful portrayal of depression is not a cinematically attractive discipline, no matter how much Cotillard beats herself to death on camera. It's not subversive, it's not innovative, it's not remotely entertaining, and it's not viable in what it tries to convey. I appreciate the resignation to formal aesthetics, where the steaminess of a poor-quality summer weekend is enhanced by individual scenes set in hideous satellite suburbs, gas stations, apartment complexes, and McMansions, but that's what we’ve got Ulrich Seidl for. (03/25/2015)

I have great respect for the social dramas of the Dardenne brothers, but there has always been something missing or excessive for me in their films. Yet this drama, set in a corporate environment, resonated with me so much that I accepted it without reservations and with enthusiasm. For me, this is the most crucial film by the sibling duo. The seemingly artificially created situation corresponds to the conflicts that unions and management resolve in collective bargaining in companies when they have to decide between preserving jobs or increasing wages. One of the world's best actresses in the lead role is just the icing on the cake. Overall impression: 90%. (10/03/2022)

Probably the most strongly structured film by the Dardenns, which is essentially a social thriller par excellence: the heroine has a clearly defined task (to persuade 9 employees to give up their bonuses so she can keep her job), a time limit and an opponent (master Jean-Marc, who allegedly affects colleagues over the phone). The Dardenn dynamics of movements elevated to a complex genre engine, which drives the film to an absolutely ingenious double twist at the end. I am repeating myself...but why not? No one makes films today which, in their simplicity, are able to perfectly reflect the complexity of the contemporary world - moral, personal and economic. No one is able to construct situations in such a way that the viewer is thrown into utter uncertainty, exposed to intense emotional terror without a single sign of manipulation. In the social drama genre, there are filmmakers who are close to Darden's verism, but the original is unmatched. An unpretentious monument to human tenacity, dignity, Marion Cotillard, and an urgent testimony about the state of contemporary society. Film-life. Without a single inkling of pathos. Besides that which evokes it in similarly unappealing attempts to achieve some sort of description. (10/09/2014)

It's a pity that it's not completed in a same way that it was started (even despite over-the-top starting point). But everything in the first half, despite the theme, that is not melodramatic, credibly anchored in reality and naturalistic from the department "although I (do not) approve this or that decision, I fully understand why the character decided to act like that and how the character came to this decision", is spoiled by the second half where the characters often become rather puppets, which are led through the unnatural and forced film-making decisions that are so lame that it is almost unbearable. After all, the environment for the final decision will start to be prepared at the last minute and not during the entire footage. And none of this would necessarily be such a problem (after all, it's still impressively presented and brilliantly performed; and it's not just about tired out Marion), if these aspects weren't completely contradicting everything that had been successfully developing so far. (11/17/2014)