By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 3 cats
Director: Francois Ozon
Starring: Stéphane Freiss | Valeria Bruni Tedeschi
Country: france
Year: 2005
Running time: 68
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0354356/combined
Michael says: “The director of SWIMMING POOL, 8 WOMEN and UNDER THE SAND takes a slight stumble with his latest feature 5 X 2. Ozon shows us five stages in a couple’s relationship beginning with the day of their divorce moving backwards through time to the time they first got together. Each time we think we know what caused the disintegration of their marriage, we move further back and learn something that happened even earlier in their relationship. 5 X 2 tells a simple story, and unfortunately, it’s not all that compelling. The acting is good, especially Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi’s work as Marion (she also starred as Béatrix in COTE D’AZUR). 3 cats”
Chris says: “Having seen all of Francois Ozon’s features except for SITCOM, I can say that he’s never made a bad film, but his latest is the closest he’s come to being boring. 5×2 begins with Gilles (Stephane Freiss) and Marion (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi), a bourgeois married couple filing for divorce, then proceeds in reverse chronological order, providing us with five glimpses of their relationship, going all the way back to when they first met.
“Ozon isn’t the first person to construct a film this way: see MEMENTO, IRREVERSIBLE, and Jane Campion’s obscure but wonderful first feature, TWO FRIENDS. While it’s enriching to view the later sequences with the hindsight and almost illicit thrill of knowing what’s going to happen to these people (and how they are so clearly doomed as a couple), it’s also not very deep—more of a novelty, really. There’s little of the inspired, fervent discourse of a superior disintegrating relationship film like Bergman’s SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE.
“Bruni-Tedeschi’s performance grows in assurance and resonance as the film progresses, but Gilles and Marion ultimately seem like a bland, unexceptional case study. Even with their quirks and revelations, they’re reduced to coming across as a generic test couple in an exercise. Loved the woman who played Gilles’ supremely bitchy ex-girlfriend near the end, though. 3 cats”