Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 2014

The Contenders:

Rosamund Pike: Gone Girl
Julianne Moore: Still Alice (winner)
Felicity Jones: The Theory of Everything
Marion Cotillard: Two Days, One Night
Reese Witherspoon: Wild

Bonus, Baby

Film: Two Days, One Night (Deux Jours, Une Nuit)
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

I don’t remember precisely when Marion Cotillard became the darling of movie fanboys everywhere. I think it may have started with Public Enemies followed by Inception. Regardless, there were a few years in the movie blogging community when everyone seemed to be madly in love with her. I like Marion Cotillard just fine; I think her performance in La Vie en Rose is one of the best of the decade, but I don’t really understand why she was a “thing” for a few years. Regardless, in 2014, she earned a rare non-English-speaking Oscar nomination for Two Days, One Night (Deux Jours, Une Vie in French). Since this is the last chance I’ll have for more than the next week for something subtitled, I figured I’d give it a shot.

Two Days, One Night is a film with a depressingly realistic plot that is devilishly simple. Sandra Bya (Cotillard) has suffered a mental breakdown and has been forced to take a leave from her job working in a solar panel factory. During her absence, it is discovered that the other 16 workers, by each working an extra three hours every week, can cover her shift and complete her work. The film starts as she is ready to return to work, only to be told that the rest of the crew has been asked to vote. Either Sandra can return to work or they can each have a €1000 (a little over $1100) bonus. But they can’t have both. Pressured by the foreman, 14 of the workers vote for the bonus. Sandra is told this by her coworker Juliette (Catherine Salee), one of the two who voted for her.