Two Days, One Night highlights power in minimalist filmmaking of Dardennes with Marion Cotillard
January 14, 2015
With their new film, Two Days, One Night, the sibling directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have stayed true to their spare but powerful aesthetic, using handheld camera, extended scenes often featuring simple framing in two-shots and straight-forward, understated smash cuts to move the story along. In fact, we could start this review by the Belgian brothers just like the last review we published here about their previous film (‘The Kid With a Bike’ harnesses potency of simple filmmaking). However, there are a few subtle changes worth noting in this new film. The Dardennes use no extra-diegetic music this time, and for the first time, they are working with an international star: Marion Cotillard.
The actress delivers a marvelous performance that only bolsters the focused gaze of the Dardennes. Wearing minimal if not any makeup, Cotillard delivers a heart-breaking performance as Sandra, a factory worker in Seraing, an industrial town of Liège in Belgium, who, upon her return to work after a medical leave due to depression, faces dismissal from her job. The boss has found a way to streamline work without her and has offered her co-workers to choose between keeping Sandra on the team or receiving a one-time bonus of €1,000. The outcome is exactly what you might be guessing: self-interest prevailed, and the majority of Sandra’s co-workers voted for their own bonus.
A colleague and friend, Juliette (Catherine Salée) convinces Sandra to ask the boss for another vote, as she has received word some of the employees were intimidated to vote for bonuses over Sandra. At first, Sandra appears weak, dubious and hesitant, but bolstered by her friend, who stands at her side, she asks the factory manager to 
hold a second vote. It is a Friday evening and the factory owner agrees to hold the re-vote on Monday. The mother of two children, Sandra is also pressured by her husband Manu (Fabrizio Rongione), who works at a budget chain restaurant, to visit her co-workers at home and in some cases their second jobs, to campaign for herself. Should she lose her job, after all, she will go back on the dole, and her family will have to move back into public housing.
With the intimacy of this story, Two Days, One Night presents an unwavering and heartfelt look at the realities of the European proletariat. With a stagnant unemployment rate in Belgium at 8.5 percent and weak economic growth, the realities of the working class in Belgium seem bleak (some numbers from the National Bank of Belgium). The Dardenne brothers are able to capture the complexity of the labor market while focusing deeply in a single character with an actress in immense control of her talents.
Over the course of time in the film’s title, Sandra tries to hold it together, popping Xanax pills for energy and muttering to herself “you mustn’t cry” on more than one occasion. Cotillard gives a brilliantly modulated performance, and the Dardennes’ distant camera catches the actress genuinely acting, working off other players. As she maintains a strong face in the presence of her work mates, alone and sometimes with her husband, she 
seems to barely hold herself together, caving to feelings of despair. When Manu tells her early in the film, in an effort of support, “You exist, Sandra … I love you,” she dynamically takes in his tender reminder of her relevance. She holds on to the positive energy with a tight grip, pauses for a moment to nearly double over in tears, but then composes herself. It reveals how threadbare Sandra’s composure is in the face of the challenge that lies ahead.
Cotillard’s range in just those few seconds is heart-stopping, and it works so well with the reserved, purist style of melodrama by the Dardennes. There’s no need to heighten scenes with music, slow motion, montage or close-ups. As Sandra confronts the various characters she works with, all give an array of reasons for either voting for her or their bonuses. In every encounter with her co-workers Sandra changes a little. Her voice wavers, she re-gains strength and confronts her own fears of not being wanted. The decisions by the Dardennes to keep he camera rolling as she crosses streets or walks paths before facing her co-workers or waiting several beats to cut away at the end of these scenes, as she turns to leave, bring a focus to these small transformations without feeling intrusive or manipulative. You really root for and sympathize with Sandra.
It’s all beautifully shot by the Dardennes’ regular cinematographer Alain Marcoen. The images are often vibrant yet mundane. Again, it’s anti-romantic but movingly raw and real. Sometimes the camera is the editor. To emphasize one rare close-up, which the film earns impactfully when Sandra’s task seems insurmountable, a swish pan to Sandra allows hardly a moment of acting to be wasted. It all dynamically builds up to a moving pay-off that affirms the strength of an individual looking for value in one way but finding it another way. That the Dardennes pull it off so powerfully with such minimal cinematic flourish speaks to their focused storytelling and a major performance by Cotillard. The reflection of life by cinema is rarely this poetic and profound.
—Hans and Ana Morgenstern
Two Days One Night runs 95 minutes and is rated PG-13 for some reason.
Screening update: There’s a series of encore screenings scheduled at the Miami Beach Cinematheque starting March 6.
It first opened in our Miami area Friday, January 16, at the Coral Gables Art Cinema and then expanded to the north in Broward and Palm Beach Counties on January 30th at the following theaters:
- Gateway in Fort Lauderdale
- Cinema Paradiso in Hollywood
- Movies of Delray in Delray Beach
- Movies of Lake Worth in Lake Worth
- Living Room in Boca Raton
- Silverspot in Naples
Update: More South Florida screenings have been scheduled for Friday, February 6th:
- Belltower Stadium 20 in Fort Myers
- MDC’s Tower Theater in Miami
- O Cinemas Miami Beach in Miami Beach
- Hollywood Stadium 20 in Naples
- Movies of Delray 5 in Delray Beach
IFC Films sent us a DVD screener for the purpose of this review.
‘The Kid With a Bike’ harnesses potency of simple filmmaking
March 27, 2012
The brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne work in a world of efficient drama. Their cinema is stripped of sentimentality yet still captures intimate moments with powerful focus that stays with a viewer long after leaving the cinema. Their spare films are experiences that stick like solid memories. You know when you have seen a Dardenne film. Characters suffer ordeals or undergo life changes that feel visceral and personal. Sometimes they are subtle (the titular character of Rosetta [1999] undergoes a glimmer of change that may or may not help her rise out of a downtrodden life in a trailer park). Other times they are more dramatic (the main character of Lorna’s Silence [2008] finds the strength and cunning to free herself from a world that could be considered modern slavery).
The Dardennes have a consistent style. Simple, sudden splices separate the scenes. There are no fades, overlaps or dissolves. Everything is shot on handheld high-definition digital cameras. There are no dramatic singular shots like swoops, zooms or close-ups. The soundtrack generally avoids non-diegetic music. When such music does appear, it stands out with potent purpose. 
Lighting seems natural and unfiltered. The actors have a natural style, and the Dardennes have been known to work with non-stars or non-actors. The brothers have never strayed from this style over the years. In fact, they have only perfected and fine-tuned it. The mix of these techniques effectively capture a austerity where only the drama of the situations influence the audience in an authentic and honest manner.
All the action that unfolds in a film by the Dardennes never feels superfluous. They build up the scenes with such efficiency that when the last few scenes arrive toward the end of the film, the balance of suspense fills you with anticipation. You begin to trust the Dardennes on an almost subconscious level. If a character goes off to do something seemingly banal, you know it will have to serve the story in some way. No moment is wasted in a film by this duo.
None of the Dardenne films I have seen have felt more tight and focused than the Kid With a Bike, which only now finally finds a distributor in IFC Films after sharing the 2011 Grand Prix award at the Cannes Film Festival with Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. The film follows 11-year-old Cyril (Thomas Doret) on his quest for a father figure after 
his biological father (Jérémie Renier) leaves him at a boarding school. The insistent quality of this little boy is smartly established at the start of the film when he refuses to give up listening to an out-of-service message on the phone, as a school counselor pleads him to hang up the receiver.
Cyril feels kinetic, even while laying in bed. He always seems breathless. He’s a steadfast creature. When the neighborhood drug dealer Wesker (Egon Di Mateo) names him “pitbull” the name seems apt. The kid fights for his bike, his final connection to his AWOL father, with unrelenting zeal. 
Wesker preys on this fatherless child, inviting him to video games and soda at his apartment and soon devises a scheme that will harness this child’s peculiar energy. It’s an energy and drive familiar to many who are preyed on to enter gangs at young ages. The purpose in Cyril to impress a male figure in his life is so strong, it transcends criminal activity. He does not even care for a cut of the take from Wesker, telling him he’s only doing it for him because he told him to do it.
The boy is in deep pain, which comes out in equal parts aggression and aloofness, when it’s not focused on impressing Wesker or during the quiet bliss in the all too brief company of his actual father. On the receiving end of most of this misguided aggression is the boy’s foster mother, the hairdresser Samantha (Cécile De France). 
She hesitantly agrees to take Cyril in after helping the boy find his missing bike at the start of the film. He imposes himself on her, asking if she might see him on weekends. She cannot seem to help herself from saying “no.” She even helps Cyril track down his father, who only sees the boy as a burden he does not want. The film is as much about this woman’s courage to step in when the boy’s father decides to take the easy way out to “start over.”
Though the Kid With a Bike is the Dardennes’ tightest film, I have not seen them ever compromise their style for a pat ending. Though the boy seems to find some kind of peace at the film’s end, the Dardennes do not hold back throwing a monkey wrench into the story with a powerful finale that leaves the viewer wondering. The open-endedness of their films is also key to their style defined by their lo-fi cinematic style. The rawness of their movies seek to capture the sensation of true-life experience. Just as life goes on after one completes a phase in growth (however big or small that experience might feel), thus it goes on after the final fade to black in a Dardenne film. Just as you never know what might happen next with every moment in life, you never get luxuriated with the promise of a tidy ending in a Dardenne film. Life goes on and who knows what is next? Bring on another Dardenne film.
The Kid With a Bike is not rated, runs 87 min. and is in French with English subtitles. It opens in Miami Beach Friday, Apr. 6, at 6:45 p.m., at the Miami Beach Cinematheque, which hosted a preview screening for the purposes of this review. It will play a series of dates as part of the theater’s on-going series “Les Freres Dardennes.” The series also includes one-night-only screenings of the above mentioned Rosetta (Thursday, March 29, at 8 p.m.) and L’Enfant, which also stars Jérémie Renier (Thursday, April 5, at 8 p.m.). The Kid With a Bike also opens in the Miami area at the University of Miami’s Cosford Cinema, Friday, Apr. 6, at 7 p.m. and to the north, in Broward County, at the Cinema Paradiso, also on Apr. 6, but at 6 p.m.
2009 top 23 films
December 26, 2009
Since the end of the year is upon on us, and the lists are starting to pop up in all sorts of media, here is my list of favorite films of 2009. I have included links to buy on Amazon where appropriate, so you can support this blog in an easy way (Note: some links are pre-orders or pages where you can sign up to be notified when a release date for the item has been announced).
1. (500 Days) of Summer
An omniscient narrator sets the film up early on by noting “this is not a love story,” but few films ever capture the feeling of falling in love as well as this movie. Director Marc Webb proves himself a deft craftsman of the stale genre of romantic comedy, which too easily becomes formulaic. The couple in (500) Days of Summer share some beautiful, subtle moments of tenderness as well as heart-rending moments of disconnectedness that never comes across as heavy-handed. The movie constantly reminds you that these are two different people with different ideas of a relationship, yet they stubbornly continue dating while remaining lovable all the same thanks to the wit of the script and the strong chemistry between Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel.
2. Inglourious Basterds
Buy: DVD or Blu-ray or 3-Disc Collector’s Edition Blu-ray
Inglourious Basterds is a true film lover’s film. Quentin Tarantino has always shown a deft ability to exploit the tools of cinema for maximum effect on the nerves through action and suspense while showing a true affection for movie-making. I’ve come to feel that whenever he is fully involved in a movie (not just writing a script), he can do no wrong. I saw this movie toward the end of its run in theaters, and even in a small movie house with a sparse audience, when the final scene ended the audience broke out in applause. Great writing, performances and pacing throughout Inglourious Basterds shows a movie’s run time matters little when the director can make it entertaining throughout.
3. The Fantastic Mr. Fox
No one does awkward as artistically as Wes Anderson, and his foray into stop-motion generated story-telling raises his lovable, damaged characters to a new level. In the strange alternate world of Fantastic Mr. Fox, the characters’ self-conscious struggles with their own shortcomings never fit more comfortably into an Anderson-directed flick. The challenge of appreciating Anderson’s work depends on how willing the audience is to acknowledge their own faults in the self-deprecating humor that drives his movies. With Fantastic Mr. Fox, he ingeniously disguises that premise behind fuzzy animals with human qualities. However, the film never sugar coats their animal behavior with innocent cuteness. The sharp delivery of dialogue between the characters sometimes slips toward wild unpredictable primal behavior, which wittily treads the line of silliness and danger. Unlike so many movies for kids, this movie felt organic and authentic, and what do kids need most but true, heart-felt honesty, even if that truth might have its dark places? As Fantastic Mr. Fox continually reminds us, “We’re wild animals.”
4. Syndromes and a Century
Buy: DVD
My only regret about this film is that I had to catch on DVD to experience it. It must have looked amazing on film. Still, the movie rises above most other films on DVD through its transcendent use of sound and vision. Never have I seen a film capture the sense of observing as strongly as Syndromes and a Century. The film lingers on landscapes, objects and people in a trance-like manner that compels the viewer to activate their internal eyes.
5. Broken Embraces
I really think Pedro Almodovar can do no wrong. His twisting tales wind from comical situations to deep insights into humanity while stopping at interesting and entertaining detours in-between. Broken Embraces, a story about family connections hidden in a near Hitchcockian-mystery is one more in a series of recent masterpieces by Almodovar. It’s hard to say if I think it is better than Talk to Her, Bad Education and Volver. He is one of the few directors currently working whose only competition is himself.
6. Avatar
George Lucas must be crying. His much-hyped Star Wars prequels fell short of their supposed revolution in digital filmmaking, and now James Cameron’s Avatar comes along to swoop down and take the recognition. Where the new Star Wars films felt like nothing more than live action and animation clashing together, Avatar feels absorbing and nearly organic (still missing in these digital characters is the actual sense of physical weight. Even in this movie, the digital creatures feel as if they are floating in the frame, instead of weighted to the ground by gravity). With Avatar, we again have the recycled hero-myth story, as also seen in the original Star Wars movie from 1977. The difference in the effects utilized to tell the story in Avatar, however, are so absorbing (especially in 3-D) that it’s enough to make anyone who saw the original Star Wars in the theater suffer a heart attack.
7. Star Trek
I had grown tired of the Star Trek films years ago. I think part of the problem of these film adaptations was that they were TV shows given the high gloss of cinematic re-envisioning. They were just fancy TV shows with the same cast members. With a new cast of actors and a springboard originating in the movie house, this movie felt like a true blockbuster worth repeated viewings in the cinema and now on DVD and Blu-Ray. I think credit lies in director JJ Abrams’ lack of preciousness for the TV series. During interviews for the movie he was quick to note he had never been a fan of the TV show, and it shows, as he breaths new life into the stale series with a newfound tension among shopworn characters.
8. District 9
Buy it: DVD or DVD Special Edition or Blu-ray
This sci-fi film felt like something done by the matured audience of the E.T. generation. It’s E.T. with a social conscience, not just a romanticized kids’ adventure film. Director Neill Blomkamp asks deep questions through the notion of aliens landing on earth, subsequently adding deeper stakes to the action sequences, which made for one of the more harrowing sci-fi films in the genre’s history.
9. Up
Buy it: DVD or DVD Special Edition or Blu-ray
I think the opening prologue of Up, yet another Pixar success story, was one of the greatest set up pieces in cinema. A marvelous bit of character development unfolds almost wordlessly, and you soon know what is at stake when old Mr. Fredericksen takes flight to South America in a floating house. You can tell the movie has a talented group of animators with true pumping hearts, unlike so many kiddie films cooked up by committees whose low brow attempts to humor their young audiences so often falls flat, cold and dumb. Up is one of those rare cartoons that transcends its digital images to reveal a living, breathing soul.
10. Tokyo Sonata
Kiyoshi Kurosawa took his filmmaking to a higher level with this family drama that unfolds during these economically crippling times that affected all corners of the globe. There are no surreal, supernatural elements to lean back on here (as much as I love his strange, unrealities that speak to the deeper core of our realities), just true family drama and crippling repression (both psychological, not to mention financial) .
11. Moon
Like District 9, Moon feels like a sci-fi film looking for something more than simply flash and entertainment. It fits best among the sci-fi dramas of Solaris and 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is a terrific achievement by newbie feature director Duncan Jones (who got his degree in philosophy and then went into advertising). Jones has a lot to offer as a young sci-fi director. He seems much more focused than the much-hyped Richard Kelly, who serrendiptously stumbles through his convoluted plots. High hopes abound for this young, new talent who is already at work on his next sci-fi film entitled Escape From the Deep.
12. Ponyo
Buy it: DVD available now or DVD preorder or Blu-ray preorder
The revered Hiyao Miyazaki returns with another animated fable that deals with man’s ecological impact on the planet couched within a love story at its most innocent: a boy fascinated by a weird-looking goldfish that wants to be human. Miyazaki and his team at Ghibli Studios indulge in their talents of hand drawn animation that eschews technology with just as much sincerity and pure love as that between the boy and the fish. The results are amazing and beyond what digital work can capture. In one scene, the waves in the angry sea undulated with incomparable organic rage that most likely would be lost in cold computer algorithms.
13. The Headless Woman
Buy it: DVD
Lucrecia Martel proves herself a master of upper crust alienation with her latest film, the most focused of her career. The extreme situation of a hit and run that may or may not involve a little boy is a catalyst for the title character’s actions or, better put, inaction. Actress Maria Onetto does an amazing job portraying a woman who tries to carry on her routine despite the mystery of her actions gnawing at her psyche. Martel’s distant and purposely unfocused manner of storytelling never found a subject more apt to her style.
14. Antichrist
I came away from this movie thinking I saw an attempt at something deeply probing into the psychology of marriages. It felt a bit like the same feeling I had when I saw Eyes Wide Shut for the first time (I’ve seen it countless times since and count it among Kubrick’s masterpieces). I’m still figuring out Antichrist. I got stuck with a bad screening plagued by technical difficulties during the film’s digital projection, which did not help matters. But I have a feeling this film could have been a rich experience into the dark well of the unconscious.
15. Watchmen
Buy it: DVD Director’s Cut or DVD Ultimate Cut or Blu-ray Director’s Cut or Blu-ray Ultimate Cut or the graphic novel
If anything, no matter how much director Zach Snyder tried, this movie proves you cannot make a faithful film interpretation of a comic book masterpiece. There are just too many key elements in this story that are so grounded in the comic book medium to effectively translate to a movie audience. Still, there are some excellent characters and ideas in here that came from a genius mind: original comic book writer Alan Moore, who rightfully refuses to attach his name to the cinematic version. Ironically, it is his ideas that give the movie its deeper quality, hence why I am including a link to buy the book, which truly is the best way to experience this story.
16. I Love You, Man
I Love You, Man was a hilariously uncomfortable bromantic comedy out of Hollywood for men who are not afraid of feelings. Yes, these jokes are nothing new or groundbreaking, but they had never been committed to celluloid with such genius comic timing, thanks mostly to the performances by Paul Rudd and Jason Segal, who did none too shabby as the apple of Rudd’s eye. But, make no mistake, this is a true love story among straight men, the only kind of relationship that could come out of a mutual appreciation of Rush’s music, mind you.
17. Julia
Buy: DVD
Director Erick Zonca and actress Tilda Swinton do a remarkable job at creating a hero out of a self-absorbed, even psychopathic alcoholic. Julia takes the idea of the deluded alcoholic and enhances the mal-perceived invulnerability, not to mention the paranoia and desperation, of the afflicted lush by throwing her into an extreme situation involving a kidnapping. The situation inevitably goes awry, taking her over the border to Juarez, Mexico where things go from bad to worse, forcing her into some kind of redemption. Besides the deftly wound story, the powerful performance at its core by Swinton will undoubtedly and criminally go over-looked during awards season.
18. Where the Wild Things Are
This much-hyped kids movie even went so far as making it to 3-D and IMAX screens and topped the box office during its opening. But, man did it disappoint people, ultimately losing close to $25 million (see box office mojo). When I saw it, I overheard a man sitting behind me, who brought a pack of rowdy kids with him, declare: “That was the worst movie I’ve ever seen!” God forbid a kiddie film actually holds up a mirror to the savage nature of children. Director Spike Jonez and writer David Eggers’ take on Maurice Sendak’s children’s classic Where the Wild Things Are is a collision of darkness, adventure, wonder, fear, aggression and mystery. With its few famous words (338), the book can only lend itself to interpretation. What you put into it, is what you get out of it. The movie is the product of two clear lovers of the book (a film sanctioned by Sendak), and with its spare story and the raw reactionary behavior of its characters, it continues to ask the audience if they are in touch with the wild thing within them.
19. A Serious Man
Hyped as a personal film by the Cohen brothers, supposedly the closest they have come to producing a movie based on their childhood, this film proves to be one of their more puzzling works of art. I recall being accosted on the way out of the movie by a group of elderly Jewish people who asked me “What does it mean?” Mind you, I am not Jewish, nor do I look it (though when I worked at the Miami Jewish Film Festival, people thought I was an Ashkenazi Jew based on my Latin looks). Two women lead the questioning, looking at me like I was keeping some secret. As they continued to ask “What does it mean?” the older men just stood behind them. All I could think was how this made an even better ending to the great, cryptic ending of the actual movie. I’ll keep my answer to the ladies between them and me.
20. Away We Go
This movie felt larger than the funny notion of putting a pregnant couple into a road movie in search of the ideal place to raise their family while visiting their dysfunctional relatives and friends across North America. Away We Go shows how we live in our own realities and dreams and how uncertainly they fit into the
world. The best anyone can do to cope is by finding the true self, in the Jungian sense. The greatest home one can find is within the partner one chooses to share a home with. The final scene is transcendent in the way it captures these characters taking their realities into a dream, as a family unit. It felt surreal and powerful and much deeper than some witty road movie.
21. Up in the Air
This is probably Jason Reitman’s tightest film yet. I think the power of it lies in the humanity of his characters. They are less cartoonish than those of his other acclaimed works, Juno and Thank You For Smoking. Reitman not only handles the cold downsizing of today’s corporate environment with an evenhanded yet emotional quality, he also peers deeply into the soul of a man who can deliver the notices without feeling any guilt about it while continuing to enjoy the hollow experience of travelling between assignments.
22. Paranormal Activity
Buy: DVD or Blu-ray or DVD Limited Edition
I have to give Paranormal Activity its due for its technical merit in creating a nerve-wracking horror movie without the cheap, in-your-face gore. It wasn’t only in the bedroom scenes that unfold in the dark, as you see the effects of the things that go bump in the night. The set-ups were brilliant with a so-called expert in the paranormal showing his wariness to enter the house and the simple scan across images from a demonology book, hinting at what this entity might look like. Paranormal Activity was a fun, creepy ride that proves nothing is scarier in the movies than what you cannot see.
23. The Road
An exercise in desolation that puts you in the uncomfortable philosophical and psychological position to consider the question “What would you do?” On what appears to be a dying planet Earth, God has seemingly abandoned man both spiritually and physically. Nothing can thrive on the planet except man. All the vegetation has somehow ceased to grow and the animals have all died off, leaving the few human survivors to cannibalize their fellow man or scavenge for any edible scraps left from the previous society. As a father and son (played with melancholy desperation by Viggo Mortenson and Kodi Smit-McPhee) search for some hope at the coast, one cannot help but wonder what lies at the core of human nature: good or evil. Probably the most hopeless movie ever made.
* * *
In many ways, this is not a definitive list for 2009. It’s a personal favorites list. Also, there are so many movies from 2009 that have yet to play in Miami or I missed opportunities to see: Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Jane Campion’s Bright Star, Lorna’s Silence from the Dardenne brothers, Tulpan, Police Adjective, Black Dynamite, The House of the Devil, An Education and on and on, so this list is bound to change or, better yet, grow.
Everyone will have his or her own list. If you feel passionate about something I have not included or included, do share. Also, share your own lists, while you are at it. They can be mere top 10s, too.
Independent Ethos 