It seems Marion Cotillard can do no wrong. Since winning the Best Actress Oscar for “La Vie En Rose” in 2008, the French actress hasn’t made one false move, working with everyone from Christopher Nolan (“Inception” and “The Dark Knight Rises”) to Woody Allen (“Midnight in Paris”) to James Grey (this year’s overlooked drama “The Immigrant”). She continues that trend with her latest release, “Two Days, One Night,” directed by Belgian sibling filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (“The Kid With a Bike,” “Rosetta”).

In “Two Days, One Night,” Cotillard appears in every scene as Sandra, a mother who learns that she’ll be laid off from her job at an energy plant if she can’t garner enough votes from her co-workers to keep her. The chief obstacle: the staff have been promised a 1,000-euro bonus if they vote to fire her, and work more hours. In his glowing review for Indiewire, Eric Kohn wrote that “Cotillard’s best work since ‘La Vie En Rose’ unquestionably ranks as her most credible turn, as the actress demonstrates a fragility that never veers into the realm of overstatement.”

Having just screened the drama at the New York Film Festival earlier this week, Cotillard sat down with Indiewire to discuss working with the Dardennes. IFC Films will open “Two Days, One Night” in New York and L.A. on December 24 followed by a nationwide expansion.

When your casting was announced for this film, people familiar with the Dardenne brothers were no doubt surprised they chose to go with somebody as high profile as you. In your wildest dreams, did you ever even think that one day they would come to you?

The Dardenne brothers are two of my favorite directors and I have seen all of their movies. I love them all. And it was not even a dream that I would allow myself to have because, now that I know some dreams can come true, I’d rather have a dream that can come true.

This one was unreachable so I didn’t even have it, so when they asked me if I wanted to work with them, I was super, super surprised. Super excited, too. I was wondering when they asked me, well, are they moving to a different place, first of all, because all of their movies take place in Seraing, their home town. And I thought maybe they’re going in a different direction and that’s why they’re asking me to be a part of it. Secretly, I was hoping that they would take me to Seraing and when I read the script I was so happy because I was like they’re really, really inviting me into their world and it made me so happy.

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Hey everyone! My name is Ina and I’m the new owner of this amazing site. I’m a huge fan of Marion and can’t wait to fully be working on Marion Cotillard Fan! Back in time I already used to maintain Marion Cotillard Fan for a while and I’m keen to keep up all the great work that the previous owners have done. I’m currently working behind the scenes but will hopefully be able to make these changes visible very soon (as well as a new layout!). So stay tuned and be sure to check back for further information :)!

Clive Owen and Billy Crudup lead a starry cast in a fitfully successful retro thriller
French director Guillaume Canet’s English-language debut has the swagger of a Cain and Abel version of Mean Streets. The film is set in 1970s Brooklyn and Canet is clearly intent on crafting something that Scorsese or Sidney Lumet might have made back in the day. There are moments when he comes close, but no amount of snazzy soundtrack choices and retro costume design can overcome the wearily predictable story and occasionally oddball casting decisions.

Blood Ties is a remake of Jacques Maillot’s Les Liens Du Sang (Rivals) in which Canet co-starred with François Cluzet as anguished good cop brother / callous criminal brother in 1970s Lyon. Canet has co-written his adaptation with James Gray and maybe it is Gray’s influence that tipped the balance towards the conventionality found in his own directorial credits like We Own the Night.

Clive Owen is the surprise choice to play rotten apple Chris. Released from prison after serving time for murder, Chris moves in with his loyal but wary brother Frank (Billy Crudup). Chris makes all the wrong choices yet always seems to come out smiling. Decent, law-abiding cop Frank ties himself in knots yet slowly surrenders his grasp on the life he wants. The film throws up moral dilemmas for both men as blood proves thicker than water and redemption remains possible, even at the eleventh hour.

Blood Ties never quite gets as gritty or grimy as you might have liked, although Canet does draw some sharp performances from a heavyweight cast that includes 1970s veteran James Caan as the brothers’ father Leon and a fierce Marion Cotillard as Chris’s drug-addled ex-wife Monica. There are scenes, moments and performances that all burn brightly but the sprawling Blood Ties never quite lets rip, or manages to connect up all these promising dots.

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first of all APOLOGIES for the lack of updates, I’m spending my summer at my summer house where my internet connection is based on a mobile modem, which is crap.
As you all know Two Days, One Night will premiere worldwide on August 22nd. Here’s an article about Marion’s career and character (Edith Piaf)

When Marion Cotillard took on Edith Piaf she lived the part, willing herself into the role of a tortured genius. Such commitment is harder now that she has a toddler. But, as Stephanie Rafanelli discovers, that doesn’t stop her trying

In a hotel suite in Paris, Marion Cotillard is behaving like a monster. We are about to start our interview when her three-year-old sprints in with his nanny, and before I have a chance to ask my first question, Cotillard has leapt on all fours and is skidding across the carpet letting out strangled roars. There’s a chase in which she plays Godzilla (upright, with claws), and Marcel, her son with French actor and director Guillaume Canet, squeals with delight. Finally she resumes her position on the sofa with Marcel still chuckling impishly under one arm. “He’ll get bored soon,” she reassures me.

Cross-legged and clad in tweed hot pants, she looks like a particularly soignée teenaged mother: her face has never lost its adolescent curves and her body barely looks 20 years old (she’s in fact 38). When Cotillard bent herself into the prematurely aged Edith Piaf in La Vie En Rose, a morphine-addicted, cancer-ridden husk of a woman, Trevor Nunn called it “one of the greatest performances on film ever”. Meeting her, you appreciate why.

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Marion is attending the Paris Fashion Week, some pics have been added to the gallery

Marion Cotillard gets it right – magically so – with Phoenix in ‘Immigrant’ Like anyone foolish enough, brave enough, or passionate enough to pursue acting as a career, Marion Cotillard has made her share of unremarkable, if not remarkably bad, films. But when the French star, who won the Academy Award for her unearthly reincarnation of Edith Piaf in “La Vie en Rose,” gets it right, the result is magic. Her Piaf, wide-eyed and woeful, was that. So was the whale trainer she played in the harrowing and heartbreaking “Rust and Bone,” a story of from-the-pits-of-despair resilience.

In the title role of James Gray’s “The Immigrant,” as Ewa, a destitute Pole who arrives in New York City on a fog-shrouded January day in 1921 in search of the American Dream, she once again astounds. In this fascinating, half-crazy endeavor, Cotillard’s Ewa is plucked from the deportation line – the immigration officers at Ellis Island have deemed her a woman of “low morals,” and are sending her back from whence she came. Her savior is one Bruno Weiss, who tells her he’s from Travelers Aid and hands the guard a few bills to facilitate Ewa’s hasty transfer to a Manhattan-bound boat.

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