You pretty much had us at Jean-Pierre, Luc Dardenne, and Marion Cotillard. Multiple Palme d’Or winning filmmakers and one of the best actresses working today: yes, please. The Belgium directors and French actress teamed up recently for “Two Days, One Night,” the film received great reviews out of Cannes (just missing a few awards by a hair it seems) and now a trailer has arrived.
The synopsis is simple: Sandra (Cotillard) has only one weekend to visit her colleagues and – with the help of her husband – convince them to sacrifice their bonuses so she can keep her job. As you’d expect from the Dardennes, the trailer looks spare, naturalistically unadorned (not much make-up for the actress), and unsentimental.
“Each of their films closely observes the realities of society while taking new cinematic risks,” Cotillard said of the filmmakers at Cannes “They make real auteur films – you can’t get much more auteur than Luc and Jean- Pierre – but manage to defy any categorization! Their cinema is absolutely universal.”
She seemed smitten by the experience even though they evidently exhausted her with double digit takes that apparently went higher than 60. “Whenever they want!” she said of working with them again. “They don’t even need to show me a script, I’ll accept right away. I’d love be their new Jérémie Renier or Olivier Gourmet.” We wouldn’t argue either.
“Two Days, One Night” open in U.K. theaters on August 8. It’s a good bet it’ll repeat at the Fall Film Festival too including TIFF and Telluride (where they feted her two years ago) and presumably a U.S. release will follow either in the fall or spring of next year. Here’s a clip from the film, plus a lot of new photos here.
