User Reviews

OK, so the reverse story-telling is a gimmick, and not even a new one, though it undeniably heightens the complexity and surprises of Gilles+Marion's "love story". But in 5x2 -- a vivisection of modern marriage -- Ozon's fans won't be let down. His trademarks are there: the fascination/disgust with romantic love, marriage and family life (q.v. his entire filmography!); the unconventional sex scenes; his talent for creating wonderful female characters; his gift with actors (everybody's fine in 5x2, but Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi is a knock-out); and his ability to skilfully integrate image, dialog, music, drama and humor.

5x2 is about the (im)possibility of love, marriage and family life in the 2000s. All couples are troubled: the protagonists Gilles and Marion; Gilles and former girlfriend Valérie; Marion's parents (who at the end/ start of the film, no longer speak to each other); and the gay couple (Gilles' elder brother and his very young lover), who are loving and tender but lead mostly independent lives and don't have sex (with each other, that is). In 5x2, love and sex are sharply distinct: Marion & Gilles are constantly avoiding sex, and the only time Ozon actually shows them at it is in the desperate post-divorce "rape" scene. In another scene, Gilles talks about the night he "proved" his love for Marion when he indulged in a bi-sexual orgy at her request (she watched but didn't join in). Gilles' ex-girlfriend Valérie is only turned on by the thought of Gilles cheating on her. We are told that the "happy" gay couple have a platonic relationship. And the only time we hear "je t'aime" in the film is from Marion to a totally drunk Gilles -- who's asleep and can't hear her -- right after cheating on him on their wedding night with a total stranger.

Ozon includes long scenes of divorce and marriage rituals. He wants us to pay particular attention to contrast between the misleading simplicity of a marriage bond and the labyrinthine complexity of a divorce contract-- as if saying that something must be wrong with an institution that evolves from the brevity of a "fidelity, support and care" vow at the wedding ceremony to the intricate, endless clauses involving division of properties, alimony, insurance, children's custody, visiting rights, etc at the divorce procedure (not to mention the need for lawyers!).

Whether you'll like (or dislike, or remain indifferent to) 5x2 will probably depend on your own love-life experience and your (dis)belief in romantic love, marriage and family life. This is crucial in your interpretation of the last (first) scene at the Italian resort: if you're an optimist/romantic, you'll be sensitive to the eternal magic of falling in love, no matter if it may eventually bring suffering; if you're cynical/sarcastic, you'll perhaps giggle at the postcard scene of two people falling in love out of boredom and loneliness spiced up by a beautiful scenery, only to be inevitably crushed by the bleak reality of marriage and family life -- please notice that the last time we see Marion and Gilles happy is at their wedding party.

The soundtrack includes great Italian love songs from the 1960s ("Ho Capito che ti Amo", "Una Lacrima sul Viso", "Mi Sono Innamorato di Te" etc): these are some of the most shamelessly romantic lyrics ever written, spelling out for Marion and Gilles the feelings they don't know how to articulate to each other (or to themselves). 5x2 ends with Paolo Conte's "Sparring Partner", and we can see Ozon slyly winking at the audience: he's closing a movie about the difficulties of marriage with a song that compares married people to, well, "sparring partners".

Though there are undeniable similarities to Staley Donen's "Two for the Road", 5x2 looks to me as a turbinated, updated Rohmerian "Moral Tale": Ozon creates a similarly masterful mix of drama and irony, using similarly arbitrary twists of love and fate on similarly self-absorbed characters, recalling Rohmer's classic lesson on how vacation and lovely landscapes can push romantic buttons in all of us (think of "Le Genou de Claire", "Pauline à la Plage", "Le Rayon Vert", the 4 seasons Tales, etc). We can thank our favorite Gallic saints that, given Ozon's talent for drama, he's such a playful, cool, witty guy, who welcomes both romantics and cynics in his scripts as well as in his audience.

How to tell the life of a couple nowadays? This is what François Ozon tried to study in his new feature-length movie, "5x2" (2004). I went to see it at the movies on the first day of its release and it didn't disappoint me at all. Ozon chose to focus on five precise moments in the life of a couple. Originality, these moments are related backwards! It means that the film begins with the divorce between the two main characters and it ends with their meeting. Ozon declared that he was influenced by a TV film made by Jane Campion a couple of years ago which told a friendship between two young girls. Campion's work began with their separation and it ended with their meeting.

It is significant to notice that in Ozon's cinema, the couple never remains stable. In "Under the Sand" (2000), Bruno Cremer disappeared leaving Charlotte Rampling hopeless. In "8 Women" (2002), Catherine Deneuve wanted to leave her husband for her lover. In "5x2", the couple formed by Gilles (Stéphane Freiss) and Marion (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) isn't an exception to the rule and presents a dull and bitter image. From the beginning (it means at the end of the film!) their relationship is bound to fail. There's a cue pronounced by Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi before they are going to swim: "We shouldn't go and swim in this part of the sea. It is dangerous". This "part of the sea" can be taken for a connotation of their forthcoming tormented love life.

Then to tell their slow but inevitable disintegration, the director preferred to leave low-key several parts of dialogs or sequences. There are 2 examples to prove it. Gilles doesn't attend Marion's childbirth and we really don't know why. A sign of cowardice? Maybe... On another hand, in the first step of the movie when they are in the hotel room, Ozon lets us suggest that they have both a lover which may have caused their divorce (to notice that in this step, when Gilles tries to have sex with Marion, it can be taken for a hopeless try to reform the couple). It could mean that Ozon's screenplay remains unfinished. Besides, he once declared that he hated writing and his scripts were nearly always unfinished. But, in reality he plays with the spectator once again. Ozon wants him to take part in his movie as much as possible the following way: it is to him to formulate ideas or hypotheses that are likely to explain the ambiguous points scattered throughout the movie.

Furthermore, the movie contains several details that speak volume about the progressive disintegration of the couple. The beginning of the movie shows us a bearded Stéphane Freiss with the disenchanted air and a pale, sad Valéria Bruni-Tedeschi. Ozon also put in a lot of effort in the light. The beginning of the movie takes us to rather dark rooms while the end presents shiny landscapes.

At last, we really can't say that Gilles and Marion form a united couple. During their wedding night, Marion spends the night outside with a stranger and the fact that Gilles doesn't attend his wife's childbirth nearly causes an argument between Marion and her parents. So, Ozon made somber two events which are in general happy ones.

Even if the originality that had secured François Ozon's reputation is less pronounced in his new movie (except as I previously said in the order of these five moments), "5x2" is a new success in this genuine film-maker's work who doesn't seem to be out of inspiration. Let's hope it lasts!

Having liked the last film of Francois Ozon ('Dans la maison') as well as some of his previous work I jumped on the opportunity of seeing one of his earlier works screened at the local cinematheque. '5x2' is based on an interesting idea - telling the story of a relationship in five episodes backwards, from its breaking in divorce to the moment of the ignition, although the idea was not completely new by 2004 when the film was made, as Christopher Nolan's Memento was made in 2000 and Gaspar Noe's Irreversible in 2002. Although Noe's film was also telling the story of a relationship, both predecessors were much more violent films. I almost have the feeling that Francois Ozon tried to experiment the same technique of story telling and picked on purpose a quite banal relationship story, broke it into episodes and told it a la reverse, experimenting with the output. Can a director tell a nicer and softer story this way? Will it gain in interest? Will the perspective change because of the story telling technique? The answer to the last question is 'somehow, yes'. The story of the eventually failed relation between Marion (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) and Gilles (Stephane Freiss) has nothing extraordinary by itself, it's a rather banal encounter of mid-class professionals, they fall for each other, they marry, they have a child, betrayals and occasional sex games throw some ambiguity in their lives, the parents may or may not influence the couple, and eventually the marriage does not hold, as half of the marriages facing similar crisis do not hold, while the other half do. The technique of telling the story changes the pace - by making us anticipate what happened BEFORE and not AFTER, after we realize the trick - and the eventual feeling - by telling us the first encounter last the ultimate impression is positive, despite the fact that as viewers we know that in the real logic of time the story does not end well. The director however decided here to reverse time and by doing this, the happy beginning turned into some kind of a happy end.

Good acting supports the director's intention. Both lead actors are credible, they play in a sincere and direct manner, and I suspect that if I had seen the variant where time runs normally (actually Ozon made such a variant) I would have been slightly disappointed. '5x2' is an apparently simple exercise in story-telling which is smarter than it first seems.

Comparisons have often been made of 5x2 with Memento. I would tend to take a simpler view, that it is just the good old Merlin style of living one's life backwards. Rather than reflecting certain technique in making motion picture, 5x2 really lets you experience Merlin's existence of remembering the future and looking forward to the past.

A short 90-minute film in 5 approximately equal segments, tracing backwards the relationship between Marion (Valeria Bruni Tetdschi) and Gilles (Stephane Freiss), their divorce, a small domestic party, childbirth, marriage and first encounter, 5x2 is a very un-Ozon film. The simplicity of narration and filming leaves you wondering if it is really from the same director of "8 Women" and "Swimming Pool".

If we follow the events chronologically (in reverse order of the way they are actually presented in the film) we may notice that it actually starts with two breaking/broken relationships: Gilles just about at the end of a 4-year endurance test in a relationship that probably should never have started, and Marion adjusting to being single again after recently breaking up with her boyfriend. The story also ends (at the beginning of the film) with a broken relationship: the divorce.

In between, Ozon has left everything delightfully open: Was the child the cause or deterrent of the breakup? Was Gilles brother's homosexual relationship really better than his own marital relationship? Was there a hidden reason for Gilles to stay away from the hospital? How much has Marion been influenced by the stormy relationship between her parents? Was it rape or adultery at Marion's wedding night? These are but only a few of the many questions not meant to be answers in the film.

5x2 is best watched with an absolutely open mind, with no specific expectations, and certainly no pre-conceived ideas. Then you may be able to see more, such as the small but intriguing sub-plot of the relationship between Marion's parents which in a way runs parallel to the two main characters', and yet has a distinct flavor of its own.

Acting is superb, from Tedeschi and Freiss to the parents, the brother and his dashing young boyfriend. Leaving out those who look for explosion, car-chase and sex (which 5x2 has, but certainly not to woo the mass audience), "serious" movie goers will not find 5x2 particularly emotionally elating or intellectually stimulating. Yet, they should not come out of it feeling empty-handed (in a manner of speaking), even if it's just for the acting, but hopefully for more.

It's very French and very dark in that way that combines sex and ennui, but compared to "Swimming Pool," Ozon's earlier effort with Charlotte Rampling, it falls flat. One reviewer here has compared it to "Memento," but it is an entirely different genre from that film, and uses the reverse chronology in a very different way--not as a generator of mystery in a noir sequence, but as markers that show the deterioration of a relationship flawed from its beginnings. In this it has much more in common with Pinter's "Betrayal." Stephane Freiss and Valerie Bruni-Tedeschi do a superb job in portraying the depressing couple. It's also something of a pleasure to see people who look real when naked, rather than the perfect products of Beverly Hills surgeons. The trailer is a bit deceptive as the sex scenes are almost all variations on coerced intimacy.

There's nothing light about this film, but some will find its art worthwhile.

When going to a film by Francois Ozon, one must be ready to bear a burden of characters' /unhappy/ relationships. The recently divorced couple does the final step to end their marriage. Even though after all Marion tells her former husband that "the divorce was just an end of something, that nobody won and nobody lose" I felt that both of them lost. During the entire movie neither Marion nor Gill were happy, especially when they were together. Their story is narrated from the divorce to their first hot Mediterranean sunset, and at the end of movie their feelings towards each other were the same. Not the real love, just a fear of not being with someone.

While in the "Water Drops..." the characters dealt with the jealousy and love, in 5*2 Marion and Gill faced the wrong decision to turn a potential affair into marriage. Story is very personal and intimate and director built it upon the acting of two great actors. Performance of Valeria Bruni Tedeschi /Marion/ was excellent.

Don't expect the romantic comedy, it is rather probe into one mistake. Worth of seeing.

7/10

Director Ozon appears determined to empty the cinema. Five scenes that could each have been told in five minutes take instead an average of about 20 minutes each, interspersed, inexplicably, with Italian crooning. The first extensive longueur is the opening scene, which consists of a divorce judge reading the dissolution document, which gives a foretaste of the fingertip-numbing boredom that is to follow. Even the characters look hopelessly bored, and their expressions rarely change during the rest of the inaction. This is another "don't you just hate males" saga, with M. Ferron acting the utter jerk in every frame. Within the first 10 minutes he is raping the bland, indecisive, explicitly naked heroine. Next he cruelly recounts his participation in front of his new wife in an orgy, incidentally telling of getting sodomised while he had intercourse with another woman while wifey watched, to spice up the yarn. The guy is an insufferable tosser, but there's ages still to go. Next he fails to turn up at the birth of their baby, and after that he falls asleep on his wedding night. If you are still fascinated by this empty, chain-smoking twit, then you have considerably more endurance than I. Meanwhile his vacuous wife is wandering through life beside him, her main response to life being the witty and charming line: "Dunno". I don't know why Ozon made this picture, either, dearie.

Warning : spoilers ahead

In 5x2, OZON's daring narrative approach consists of 5 isolated moments of a failed romance, played backward. The structure is largely artificial it seems, leaving too many blanks for viewers to fill in, and I didn't manage to enter the whole story.

In addition to experimental choices, I found that Marion and Gilles were, except for a few scenes, uninteresting or even despicable characters (especially Gilles, the unconsiderate, sex-driven husband).

On the other hand, OZON's accurate direction, combined with soft lighting and scarcity of sound, create a unique atmosphere, like in his previous movies.