Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Two Days, One Night had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and will have its U.S. bow at NYFF52. Oscar winner Marion Cotillard plays a young woman suffering from clinical depression who has to convince her colleagues to renounce their annual bonuses so she can keep her job.
Steeped in the Dardennes’ favorite themes of work, family, and the value of money, the filmmaking duo's latest drama is a simple story about miserable labor relations, the way in which an economic downturn can effect other, less quantifiable slumps, as well the pressure it puts on a marriage.
Cotillard's performance as this vulnerable and defiant cinematic heroine is beautifully judged. The filmmaking is similarly controlled; it's compassionate and unrushed, while making sure that every moment has an impact. Variety's Scott Foundas summarizes it as: “The Dardenne brothers take on a movie star and lose none of their beautifully observed verisimilitude in another powerhouse slice of working-class Belgian life.”
This new trailer gives viewers a preview of Dardennes' new sociorealist offering.
Two Days, One Night | Trailer | NYFF52
NYFF Official Description
The action is elemental. The employees in a small factory have been given a choice. They will each receive a bonus if they agree to one of them being laid off; if not, then no one gets the bonus. The chosen employee (Marion Cotillard) spends a weekend driving through the suburbs and working-class neighborhoods of Seraing and Liège, knocking on the doors of her co-workers and asking a simple but impossible question: will you give up the money to let me continue to earn my own living? The force of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s new film lies in the intensity with which they focus on the second-by-second toll the situation takes on everyone directly affected, while the employers sit at a benign remove. In Two Days, One Night, the Dardennes take an urgent and extremely relevant ethical inquiry and bring it to bold and painfully human life. A Sundance Selects release.
