Veteran stars like Meryl Streep, Judi Dench and Glenn Close are in leagues of their own, but we are blessed with some truly fine young actresses at the moment including Jennifer Lawrence, Scarlett Johansson, Rooney Mara, Keira Knightley, Saoirse Ronan, Carey Mulligan, Dakota Fanning, Shailene Woodley, Chloë Grace Moretz, Amanda Seyfried, Ellen Page, Anne Hathaway and Elizabeth Olsen.

In between these two extremes are the likes of Kate Winslet, Cate Blanchett, Amy Adams, Zoe Saldana, Sandra Bullock, Kristin Scott Thomas and two seriously underrated talents in Melissa Leo and French star Marion Cotillard.

Now 38, the La Vie en Rose Oscar-winning Cotillard is a real chameleon at home in either English or her native French tongue.

Cotillard is always the character, never the star – so she’s perfectly at home in this low-budget social realism drama about a mother-of-two faced with losing her job at a solar panel factory.

Helped by her husband (Fabrizio Rongione) and after returning to work following a battle with depression, Sandra has just one weekend to convince 16 colleagues to forego their bonuses to save her skin.

Written and directed by Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the subtitled, repetitively-structured film has been shot with the super-concentrated conscience of a Ken Loach movie (think of his year-2000 janitor drama, Bread & Roses) rather than as a Made In Dagenham (2010) style comedy.

Echoing Sidney Lumet’s classic jury film 12 Angry Men (1957), Two Days... is very much a relevant film of our times.

It questions the authenticity of ‘secret’ ballots and how much we really need for ourselves at the expense of behaving selfishly towards others in their hour of need.

Hovering close to suicide, Cotillard’s pill-popping Sandra handles every face-to-face meeting and twist and turn of her heartbreaking plight with such openness, honesty and decency she forces us to assess what we really need to live – and what we could do without.