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Two Days, One Night Movie Review

Two Days, One Night is a 2014 Belgian drama film directed by the Dardenne brothers and starring Marion Cotillard. It’s a moving, but flawed flick.

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“Every time I feel like a beggar,

a thief coming to take their money.

They look at me, ready to hit me.

I feel like I’m hitting them too“

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The film follows Sandra, a young woman assisted by her husband, who has only one weekend to convince her colleagues to give up their bonuses so that she can keep her job. The premise is strong in this one. It explores how complicated human interactions can get when various interests collide. The film is very realistic in portraying people as they really are – selfish and only looking out for themselves for the most part.

However, the story itself ultimately felt a bit too specific in its setup, thus robbing it quite a bit of universality. Its working environment felt far from universal, but an even bigger problem is the repetitive nature to storytelling as we get to see Sandra talk literally to almost everyone among her colleagues. That made the movie less engaging unfortunately.

The standout is Marion Cotillard. Other characters are all quite forgettable, but her Sandra is excellent, relatable and you care for her as her plight is so heartbreaking. Cotillard herself gave one of her best performances here as she commands the screen from start to finish. She carried the entire movie on her shoulders and elevated it significantly.

Where Two Days, One Night succeeds is at dialogue, which is grounded in reality and believable. Thus, the sequences range from forgettable to really impactful emotionally speaking. The entire movie is quite moving, but again it can get too repetitious and it needed more room to breathe as we did not need to witness so many conversations with so many different people. Ultimately, it’s a solid effort, but I continue to find Dardenne brothers’ output overrated as I’d also failed to be amazed by ‘Rosetta’.

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Whereas Two Days, One Night is quite emotional at times, it explores its themes very well and Marion Cotillard elevated the material significantly with her powerhouse performance, the movie is unfortunately too repetitious in its conversational structure, overly specific in premise and ultimately just solid overall.

My Rating – 3.5

You can get this movie on Amazon.