Marion Cotillard’s in a tank top for most of the movie, hair tied back and two distinct waves of brown hair sweeping across her forehead. You can tell it’s summer because when she goes to bed at seven o’clock it’s still light out. People are not mean to her, exactly; in fact, most of them are remarkably polite. But they’re anxious, conflicted, annoyed. Sad, fearful and broke. She wants her job back, she was out for a while, knocked flat by a depression, and in her absence the company has pitted her coworkers against her. If she’s rehired, they won’t get their bonus check. Some of them need it. Some of them merely want it, and that’s no crime. “It’s understandable,” Cotillard keeps saying. “It’s only natural.” Her heart fills and breaks as she solicits each colleague’s mercy. After nearly every conversation, she talks about giving up. She looks exhausted, like the next time the camera cuts to her she won’t be there, just a tank top and a bottled water resting on the cobblestones of some Central European street, whoever they belonged to having evaporated into the atmosphere. This doesn’t happen. It’s her triumph that it doesn’t.
No posts