“As much as I pore over Oscar predictions beforehand, there’s always at least one big surprise. The person that no one was expecting or really talking about that manages to sneak into a big race. This year, it was Academy darling Marion Cotillard. Although when conferring with IMDB just now, it seems her win for La Vie En Rose was her only previous nomination. I could have sworn she had a couple others. I suppose she’s been in the conversations in recent years, and this year when she wasn’t being talked about that much, she snuck in stealing the contested 5th spot when the first 4 were pretty much set for a while.
In this foreign film (right, not easy to land a nod when you’re speaking French instead of English throughout), Cotillard plays Sandra, a woman who has just been let go from her job. She finds out that a vote that was taken by all the remaining employees to either allow her to remain or reward them all with a bonus, may have been negatively influenced by the management. She’s granted a chance at a new vote, and spends the weekend knocking on the doors of every one of those employees, imploring them to change their minds.
I thought the film was very thought provoking. Such a difficult choice that lay ahead of her, and she was constantly struggling to convince herself what she was doing was right. She desperately needed her job to make ends meet and support her family, but all these people she was approaching also desperately needed the bonuses that they’d otherwise be awarded. It took so much courage to go up to them all, and place everyone in an impossible situation.
What I liked was meeting all of the various colleagues she had to persuade. Every time she walked up to a new door, I was curious to see who’d be on the other side. Their reactions to her were all different. Some were sympathetic, others hostile. For some the decision to vote one way or the other came easy, for others it was a struggle. Such a seemingly simple little film was filled with universal issues.
Two Days One Night – \m/ \m/ \m/ \n”