“Will Work for Meaning”: I review “Two Days, One Night”

at AmCon:

The most tense scene I saw in any movie this year was Marion Cotillard leaning against a blank wall gulping from a bottle of water.

Cotillard is playing Sandra in “Two Days, One Night,” yet another must-see from Belgium’s Dardenne brothers (“The Kid with a Bike,” “Rosetta,” “The Child,” “The Son”). Sandra is waiting for the results of a vote taken by the employees of Solwal, the company where she used to work. When the movie opens she has barely, partially overcome a severe depression; she’s ready to work again, but her boss has other ideas.

He decides that the other workers will choose between rehiring Sandra or getting a thousand-Euro bonus each. They vote and Sandra loses, but the boss decides—he has this power to make the rules—that there will be a revote on Monday, in response to claims that the foreman intimidated people in the initial vote. The title refers to the one weekend Sandra has to convince the others to choose her job over their paychecks.

more, including If I Were a College Chaplain (and other terrible ideas)