Page - 59 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/02

Visionary Critique | 59www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/2, 45–66 fied with their efforts and determined to immediately start looking for a new job. When the camera stays behind as she moves away, walking away into her future, the image underlines the idea that even if she lost against the capitalist instrumentalization of self-interest, she has developed agency and a new sense of self-worth. In a departure from their usual practice of working with relatively unknown actors, the Dardennes cast Marion Cotillard as Sandra, experimenting again, after working with Cecile de France in The Boy with a Bike (2011), with the pos- sibility to integrate a well-known actress into their “family” of cast and crew members, and quite deservedly, Cotillard was nominated for and won a number of best actress awards for her intense representation of Sandra.32 Yet even if Cotillard stands out as an actress and her character is at the center of the inter- est of the film, she does not dominate film or cast, because, as usual in the films by the Dardennes, supporting characters are developed with complexity and receive considerable attention as well, underlining that although Sandra might feel alone, she is in fact embedded in a supportive, empowering network of relationships. In focusing on Sandra not as an atomic individual, but as a subject-in-relation- ship, the Dardennes reflect a central concern of feminist theory and Christian ethics, namely the affirmation of the importance of relationship for the flourish- ing of the subject and the realization of the common good, together with the critique of the traditional gendering of the autonomous subject as masculine and the relational subject as feminine.33 Sandra is shown to be a part of a large network of different relationships, most importantly the one with her husband in addition to relationships with her children, friends, colleagues, the foreman of the factory and her employer. As she visits her colleagues at their homes, 32 Among other nominations and awards, Cotillard was nominated for an Oscar and a César and won the European Film Awards. 33 Mackenzie/Stoljar 2000, 5–11; Scholz 1997. Fig. 6: Film still, Two Days, One Night (BE/FR/IT 2014), 00:27:52.