Sandra has been off work with depression and just as she feels she is ready to return she learns has been made redundant. It emerges that while she was away her fellow workers slightly increased their work time to cover for her than, at the suggestion her boss and supervisor they held a ballot to decide whether to each get a 1000 Euro bonus and let Sandra go or to let her return. Under pressure from the supervisor most voted to let her go. A friend tells her that the ballot is to be re-run in two days so she sets off to persuade enough of her colleagues to change their minds. Each has their reason for voting to let her go and most need the money; some are persuaded, some apologise but explain that they can't afford to back her and one or two actually get violent accusing her of trying to 'steal' their bonus. As the end approaches it is clear that the vote will be very close; will Sandra get the numbers she needs or will she fall short?When I started watching this I knew nothing about it beyond the fact that it starred Marion Cotillard and was Belgian as it was a last minute replacement for a previously advertised TV programme. This lack of knowledge did make it a little hard to get into but as the film progressed I started to sympathise with Sandra's plight. As we meet her colleagues it is also easy to sympathise with most of them too; they need the extra pay if not quite as much as she needs her job. The more people she visited the more it looked as if she stands a chance of success to by the end there is a feeling of tension when the vote takes place. The cast does a solid job, especially Marion Cotillard who is rarely off screen as Sandra and really makes the viewer feel for her character. There are a few details that seem unlikely; I don't know about Belgian labour laws but it seems unreasonably that a workforce could be given a vote on whether they want a bonus or to let a colleague on sick leave return to work. Sandra also makes a remarkable recovery following a 'medical issue'. Overall though this is worth watching if you want a character driven drama without lots of action. I suspect I would have enjoyed it more if I'd known a little more about it before I started watching.These comments are based on watching the film in French with English subtitles.

The subject matter of the Dardenne's "Two Days, One Night" is unusual, to say the least, for a mainstream movie in this day and age, (though perhaps not for the Dardenne's who have made their name from squeezing the 'drama' out of dramatic material). It's about industrial relations, or rather it's about one woman fighting to keep her job, concentrating to a large degree on her psychological state over the short period of the film and there's no denying that Marion Cotillard is very good in the part and yet I never felt involved. In truth, nothing very much happens; Marion spends her time going round her co-workers asking each of them in turn to vote for her in a secret ballot. After a time this gets very dull indeed. It's certainly an intelligent film and it's nicely done but over this, give me the hysteria and the melodrama of "Norma Rae" any day.

Given the premise of this story I think most people could come up with a script to equal or surpass the one in this movie. The premise has a boss of seventeen blue-collar employees present them with the decision to forgo their bonuses in favor of not laying off a particular woman. That woman is Sandra (Marion Cotillard) whom we get to know throughout the movie. Sandra is recovering from an episode of depression and is just coming back to work, only to find out about the vote where the majority of employees voted to keep their bonuses. That would send most any person into a depression, so Sandra is indeed in a tough situation, given her already delicate emotional state. Also, she has a husband and two young children and losing her job would have a devastating effect on the family. Feeling that her foreman had biased the vote by telling people that even if Sandra were saved, someone else would be fired, Sandra appeals to the big boss for a re-vote, and that is granted. From there the movie slips into low gear as Sandra tracks down her fellow employees and tries to convince them to vote in her favor. One after another we see her finding out where her colleagues live and going to their homes. She is seen, in *long* takes, walking, riding the bus, and being driven by her husband to the homes. What develops is pretty predictable. Some workers are swayed and some just feel that, given their situation, they cannot give up the bonuses they had worked for. We see how lower middle class people have a hard time of it and how varied their situations are.I guess that there are some bosses dumb enough to set up a situation like the one portrayed here. The way these decisions are usually handled is to make the proposition of forfeiting bonuses, or raises, in favor of keeping all the staff on board, rather than signaling out a specific employee. Some things did point to why Sandra might have been singled out though. She had been on sick leave for depression with her ability to function in question, and the remaining employees could take up the slack in her absence. I got the feeling that Sandra was not particularly well liked and was surprised by how little she knew about her fellow employees, particularly given there were only sixteen others for her to know. It's not surprising that this situation produced a lot of strong emotional reactions--jobs and money strike at the heart of people's lives.I like Marion Cotillard and feel she was good in this difficult role. Given that she is portraying a woman recovering from depression she has few highly dramatic scenes, so to appreciate her performance you have to key on her subtle reactions. The movie illustrates the difficulty in dealing with a depressed person and I vacillated between being irritated with Sandra's husband and his apparent insensitivity by goading his wife into painful situations that could easily send her back into full-scale depression. But then I had to realize what a delicate situation he was dealing with and moderated my opinion. Getting through this was a bit of a slog. I found my attention had to be restrained from wandering.

Rising above her circumstances Marion Cotillard's role as Sandra is set in the everyday mundane world of her neighbors and workplace. The highs and lows of confronting her co workers is a journey which contains a depth of dynamics not immediately obvious in the first five minutes. However, this belies the character depth revealed through this arduous process where humility leads to greater things.