Actor · 1975

Marion Cotillard

5: briefs
13:00: average
65 min: in total

On film.briefs5

Two Days, One Night

Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne · 2014

Two Days, One Night follows Sandra, a Belgian factory worker returning from medical leave for depression, as she spends a weekend visiting sixteen colleagues to persuade them to reverse their vote against her reinstatement — a vote linked to a €1,000 bonus. Shot in Seraing with rigorous naturalism, the Dardenne brothers anchor ethical questions in physical detail: bus tickets, kitchen tables, rain-slicked pavements. Marion Cotillard’s performance avoids exposition, locating dignity in hesitation, fatigue, and quiet persistence. The film won the European Film Award for Best Actress and was Belgium’s Oscar submission.

13:00

A Very Long Engagement

Jean-Pierre Jeunet · 2004

Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 2004 film follows Mathilde, a young Breton woman who refuses to accept her fiancé’s death in the First World War. Using letters, archives, and dogged interviews, she reconstructs the fate of five soldiers condemned to no man’s land. Shot by Bruno Delbonnel and scored by Angelo Badalamenti, it balances tactile realism with poetic restraint, anchoring its wartime narrative in the quiet persistence of civilian life in 1920s France.

13:00

Big Fish

Tim Burton · 2003

Tim Burton’s 2003 fantasy drama Big Fish adapts Daniel Wallace’s novel into a tripartite portrait of a father’s tall tales and his son’s reluctant reckoning with them. Shot in Alabama with Philippe Rousselot’s sun-bleached cinematography and scored by Danny Elfman, it balances Southern Gothic texture with mythic whimsy. Though its tonal shifts and narrative looseness divided critics, its central theme — that stories are how we hold people close after they’re gone — remains its quiet, steady pulse.

13:00

Midnight in Paris

Woody Allen · 2011

Woody Allen’s 2011 romantic comedy follows a screenwriter who, while visiting Paris, begins nightly journeys to the 1920s — not to change history, but to confront his own dissatisfaction with the present. Shot on location with Darius Khondji’s amber-toned cinematography and anchored by Owen Wilson’s understated performance, it uses time travel as emotional shorthand rather than speculative premise. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

13:00

Public Enemies

Michael Mann · 2009

Michael Mann’s 2009 biographical crime film adapts Bryan Burrough’s non-fiction account of John Dillinger’s final year and the FBI’s pursuit under Melvin Purvis. Shot digitally on location across Wisconsin and Illinois, it prioritises procedural detail, institutional logic, and tactile authenticity over psychological exposition or romantic myth. With Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, and Marion Cotillard, it charts the convergence of Depression-era desperation, federal ambition, and emerging surveillance infrastructure.