You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
A relationship can get crowded when depression moves in. Two Days, One Night, written and directed by the Dardenne brothers, follows Sandra (Marion Cotillard) and her husband, Manu (Fabrizio Rongione), during the course of one weekend as she tries to persuade her co-workers to forego their bonuses, allowing her to return to work.
Sandra's absence from her factory job has been due to sickness, and whatever the original cause, has resulted in a clinical depression, leaving her reliant on pills, sleep, and psychic isolation to keep a tentative grasp on life. She must now fight for her job. Her co-workers have been delivered a stark choice: if Sandra returns to the factory floor they will each lose a €1000 bonus. Worse, they have been “reminded” by a manager that, as they have coped as a workforce without Sandra's input, if she returns, one of them may be made redundant.
She is supported by a long-suffering husband, Manu, a chef, who is left to shoulder the day-to-day domesticity of their lives with two small children. He begs Sandra not to give in. He watches her intake of pills with alarm, refusing to entertain that, without her minimum-wage salary, they will once again be reliant on benefits and state housing.