Telluride at Dartmouth: "Two Days, One Night"
Factory foreman Marion Cotillard has one weekend to convince her co-workers to save her job in the newest from the Dardenne brothers (Kid with a Bike).
During their illustrious 30-year career, writer-directors Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne (The Kid with the Bike) have created and refined a distinctive mode of cinematic social realism with stories of everyday people struggling against an impersonal, cruel economic system. A factory foreman (Marion Cotillard) is about to be downsized unless she can persuade her co-workers to give up their raises. Her efforts lead to rich, powerful scenes of moral ambiguity and surprising psychological insight. Though we associate Cotillard (Rust and Bone) with alluring sexuality, she here unpretentiously embraces Sandra’s everydayness in a marvelous performance, one perfectly harmonized with the skillful, poignant, observational style of the Dardennes. (Belgium, subtitled, 2014, 95m) Courtesy of IFC
