Typical of a Dardennes brothers film, the central character valorously pursues a simple quest that proves character defining. Also, everything feels real, natural, unstaged, their remarkable artistry notable only in its emotional and intelligent effect.
The opening shot is a close-up of Sandra asleep amid a barrage of coloured patterns. In the closing long shot she is walking away down a bright street, her confidence and self-worth restored, a figure of new agency instead of the company’s passive victim. There’s now a spirit in her step. The first shot shows her in herself, barely coming out of depression. The second places her in the outside world.
Here’s the film’s central irony. The company makes solar cells. That is, a modern forward-looking company publicly intent upon saving the ecology has no concern for the individual lives of its workers. The new righteous capitalism is as heartless as the old. To the film’s credit, no-one here states “We workers have to unite against the heartless greedy bosses.” But that’s one subtext.
Sandra is about to return from sick leave. The bosses have given her unit a choice. If they vote to fire her each will get a 1,000 Euro bonus. The foreman’s suasion led to a 14-2 initial vote against her, but she and a friend have persuaded the boss to hold a second, secret ballot. Sandra has the weekend to persuade seven conversions. She falls one short.
The workers’ responses reveal the hardship that the current economy and business practices force on workers. They all need the money, so few will serve her need. Few will stand up against the brutal choice the company has forced on them.
Some of the responses are remarkable. The immigrant kids’ soccer coach cries in shame that he had voted against her. He remembers she saved his job by taking the blame for his accident. Another man cries when his need for the money prevents his doing what he knows he should. A man changes his mind after his hothead son knocks him out, furious that Sandra should be claiming their hard-earned bonus money.
Another immigrant, on a limited term appointment, decides to support her, changes his mind when he realizes the foreman’s revenge would cost his extension, but ultimately votes for her. That helps her to refuse the company’s compromise offer. They would pay the bonus and lay her off now, then rehire her in place of one of the limited-term people. Rather than continue in the company’s unnecessary pressuring of its employees she walks away.
To reach that growth Sandra has to overcome several problems. She feels emotionally exhausted. She doesn’t want her colleagues’ pity. She feels she is begging for their support. She dreads the work climate if they should lose their bonus for her to keep her job. Yet she needs the money, for her two children and to handle the mortgage she shares with her short-order cook partner. Her insecurity even leads her to doubt her partner’s love. Despair prompts her to a suicidal overdose, which she aborts when a worker comes over to support her. Indeed, she’s leaving her husband because he refused to let her support her.
Two songs on the radio mark her growing spirit. The first her partner turns off to protect her spirit, but she turns on full blast: It’s All Over. The second the couple and new divorcee sing exuberantly together, Gloria. Sandra grows from resignation to glory.
If the eight supporters provide some hope, more is offered by the children. They instinctively want to help, like her kids wanting to carry the pizzas and the little black girl wanting to escort her to see her father in the laundromat. People want to help each other, to work together, if only their bosses wouldn’t find profit in pitting them against each other.
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