Building her up - for her*

This is a follow-up piece to a review of Two Days, One Night (2014)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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19 September

This is a follow-up piece to this blog’s review of Two Days, One Night (Deux Jours, Une Nuit) (2014)

* Contains spoilers – best read if you have watched the film *

To those who think that depression – unlike a broken leg – is invisible, just watch Marion Cotillard in Two Days, One Night (Deux Jours, Une Nuit) (2014) : the makers of this film have not just ‘observed’ depression well, they have understood it !

As the earlier review said, Sandra (or, as her boss Dumont invariably calls her, Mme Bya) shows low mood in her gait, posture, demeanour, expression. When we first see her, she has escaped into dreams, woken on the second attempt by her mobile, and throughout we see that tendency, characteristic of negative thinking, to retire out of it all to bed (or to sleep). When Manu (Fabrizio Rongione) arrives home, there is an uncertainty with which he calls out Sandra ? that hints that we have been here before**, not just that Juliette, Sandra’s colleague, has called him after speaking to Sandra (because she could not face meeting Dumont).

When Juliette and she do confront Dumont, Sandra experiences panic / a panic-attack, and the sort of freezing within that paralyses – to Juliette’s (Catherine Salée’s) concern, maybe because she does not know this in Sandra. After Sandra’s reluctance at home, the editing likewise surprises us by suddenly having us there, seeing Juliette’s car approach and pull into the car-park at Solwal (where they both work). Perhaps after that, and whilst most members of the family work on finding addresses for her other colleagues, we hear from her that she has declined an offer from Robert, her other supporter, to drive her around when Manu is at work (until noon on Saturday morning).

However, although Sandra clearly wanted to be alone to try to canvass her fellow employees, she is also obviously agoraphobic on the bus, and, as the day progresses (in no sort of descriptive order within the film) we see her confused, drying up / choking, using a stereotyped approach / rehearsed speech to broach the topic of the bonus and her being laid off, and maybe even mildly hyperventilating.

Have charities such as @MindCharity / @otrbristol / @CharitySANE taken note of Two Days, One Night (2014) for its understanding depression ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) September 18, 2014

Yet, for those who credit psychiatric diagnosis over ‘the social model’ of mental distress or formulation, what the film really, and subtly, shows is bullying in the workplace, pressures that have weighed on Sandra, who resists when (on the stairs) Manu is urging her not to retire to bed (and encouraging her to stand up for her job), and cites the tensions at work – she had expected to return there, but why, when she now has to face up to every single one of them if she is to overturn the vote of 14 for the bonus, 2 for her return to work, would she not be reminded of what was hard and painful ?

At the end of the film, we appreciate that it must be Dumont’s acquiescence in Jean-Marc’s divisive foremanship that has hurt her (this was felt very strongly on the second time of viewing). Dumont offers her the job back in September, when he will have not renewed the fixed-term contract of one of her colleagues (if he can be trusted that she will not just be laid off*** without any return to work), but, when she challenges him that he is ‘laying off’ others in her place, Dumont hides behind the legality that he would merely not be continuing their posts, which are specified to be time limited, rather than dismissing them (same difference ?).

The film is deliberately vague, but it appears that only on Friday (on the eve of Sandra being due to return to work – on Monday ?) has a vote has been taken (by a show of hands – and sprung on the workforce ?) that sets receiving the bonus against Sandra coming back. Cruel brinkmanship, almost calculated to make Sandra crumble at the fact that (frightened into it) almost everyone has chosen the former over her – which we can easily attribute to Jean-Marc’s chicanery (after all, if he stops her returning to work, he shows everyone his authority and power) and Dumont’s pliability…


In the closing shot, we see Sandra calling Manu and smile, having parted earlier from her former colleagues, cleared her locker and been promised a visit after work by Juliette, not just because (which she says that she will never forget) she has seen those eight people care for and vote for her (but eight still vote for the bonus), but also because she has been able to stand up to Jean-Marc, feeling presumably nothing to lose, and tell him that she knows how he has lied and cheated against her.

Julien :
May I speak to you frankly ? (Sandra agrees.) My wife and I were both [saying]. You can’t ask me.
[…]
Sandra (winding up the stressful conversation about the bonus) : We’ll see.


There have been other little hints (which come together well on a second viewing) during the previous part of the film :

* To Juliette, when Sandra and she have spoken to Dumont (but when – because she ‘froze inside’ (not her exact words) – she has failed to say what is on her heart, namely that she is well and able to come back to work), she says It’s the emotion of being back here and seeing Dumont

* Timur, on the edge of the football pitch (a rail significantly between them), reminds himself of Sandra’s kindness to him in taking the blame when he had broken some cells, and Jean-Marc had said that it had not been a very good example for Sandra to set to Timur (probably not believing it, and saving it up for retribution later ?) – Sandra’s smile, walking away, at having his support seems tinged (Timur says I’m really glad that you came), maybe with being reminded of a difficult time for both Timur and her

* To Anne, regarding Nadine, She could have told me herself, where, when earlier Nadine had pretended not to be in, but could be heard on the intercom, Sandra is hurt because of their apparent close relationship (and, by now, she has already heard a little of Jean-Marc’s intimidation of Nadine and the others from Juliette)

* To Manu, she exclaims It can’t start [up] again ! (referring to Jean-Marc’s tactics ?), and, as mentioned above, Sandra has reservations, when she thinks about a return like this, because of the tensions that already existed at work

* The fight that erupts where Yvon is knocked out is an indication of the tensions and pressures that people are under, quite apart from the abuse that Sandra is given (which erupts again on Monday morning)

* To Alphonse, in the launderette, You’re like me, you’re afraid of Jean-Marc

* All these phrases : You preferred to lay off Sandra / We can’t afford both [sc. bonus and keeping Sandra] (Jean-Marc ?) / Does he think it best I am fired ?


Some other little hints and references :

* The track that Manu turns off in the car, and first brings a smile from Sandra (when he puts it back on, and she then turns it right up) is La nuit n’en finit plus, with lyrics at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb-wQusuraY

* When Sandra is having ice-cream cornets with Manu, she says that she wishes she could be L’oiseau qui chante là – maybe Annie Lennox’s ‘Little Bird’ (from the album Diva (1992)) ?

* Two or three times, we hear the colourful, concise word chômage, so much more onomatopoeic than our ‘[on] the dole’… ?

* Sclessin (whose Rue Côte D’Or is mentioned as a colleague’s address) is a suburb of Liège (Belgium)

* The indications of need (the Eurozone / the recession) in those who are / seem to be ‘working on the black’ (travail sur le noir) :

Willy (met with his wife ) : Salvaging tiles in their back yard, and their daughter needs 500 per month (600 with room) – 1,000 both is and is not a large amount in relation to it ?

Of Juliette : Said that ‘her guy’ is doing up cars ‘on the black’ (which is also what Yvon is doing ?)

Hicham : Working in the shop sur le noir


End-notes

* Although Sandra doubts, at different times in the film, not that Manu pities her (he says that he does not as such), but whether he loves her, and whether they will stay together (saying that they have not slept together for four months and does that bother him), we see him giving her the encouragement that she needs to do what she does – she ends the film intending to look for another job, and early on had baulked at the task ahead, saying that they can go back into social housing.

Giving another perspective, asking why people have said what they did (i.e. what their motive is, e.g. to put her off so that they can keep their bonus), is a form of CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) for Sandra at this taxing time (because she wants to say As if I don’t exist, I’ll look like a beggar, and, after Anne’s husband has shouted at her (and using his words), that she does not want to piss anyone else off) :

Manu does, for Sandra, what the pressure causes her not to be able to do, not to think negatively, and we sense (and then see vividly, in the hospital) that he does love her, and that he is doing it for the good that it will be to her. No doubt she could now do with finding ‘a purpose in a project’, but this one is too personal for her to cope with, when she seems to be doing so well with her children and family.

** Maybe that disquiet is for reasons that connect with her later attempt at suicide… ? Manu tries to tell Sandra that the doctor told to stop taking Xanax, but she replies that she needs them.

*** Not an exact term, because the subtitles use it interchangeably to refer to dismissal, whereas (in England & Wales) a lay-off is temporarily requiring employees to cease work, but without dismissing them (e.g. in a downturn, say, yet in expectation of gaining new orders for products).


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)