5X2

I first came aware of this movie, 5x2, after seeing it on TV. I am puchasing a hard copy because I felt it was fairly intellegent, but entertaing take on marriage. While I generally do not like chick-flicks, this one is an exaption. Just one nitpick, I still don't know why in this day and age there is not a Spanish subtrack. As a learner of the laugue, that would come in handy for the Spanish speakers/learneres in this contry.

"5x2" (Five Times Two) is written & directed by Francois Ozon, who previously made the English language film "Swimming Pool." That film was a noir-ish murder mystery with lots of sex. A lot of people didn't like it, a lot of people loved it. I fall into the second category. In 5x2 he takes a step back as far as entertainment, but takes a step forward in realism. This movie isn't very original, the story's been done before and the reversal thing's been done hundreds of times...But the dialogue and events happen pretty realistically, which helps. When we meet Gilles (Stephane Freiss) and Marion (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi), a married couple they are in front of a divorce lawyer about ready to sign their divorce papers. Once they do and they are officially divorced, they go to a motel room and have quick meaningless sex that neither one of them enjoys. After Gilles asks Marion if she'd like to try again (marriage, that is) she simply leaves. The film jumps backwards to a fairly awkward moment. Gilles and Marion are entertaining Gilles' gay brother and his boyfriend, where Gilles makes some fairly odd revelations. Skipping back again, we see the difficult birth of their son Nicolas; Their marriage; How they met and then, finally, them walking off into the sunset after their first encounter. I know it sounds as if I just ruined the ffilm for you, but rest assured. I just described every event in the film and didn't really tell you anything. This is a good foreign-film; This movie could take place in America just as easily and almost everything Ozon has in this film really happens to the most average couples (with the exception of Gilles' revelation. That only happens with certain ones). The film is no masterpiece and it's not "Brilliant!" like the cover says. It's an interesting character study for sure, the scenes of nudity are nice, and it keeps you fairly entertained. As I said, his previous effort Swimming Pool was much better...But this isn't a bad film. In a few words; Rent It First. GRADE: B

Weak movie. Female lead lacks.

Good French cinema undeniably exists (the Polish-French collaboration Double vie de Veronique ranks among my favorite films) but from my own personal experience, a disproportionate amount of movies made in France turn out as puzzling disappointments. Perhaps it's that the sexual-spiritual intensity of so many of the relationships that are captured in French literature and film contain too much internal feeling to translate well to a foreign audience. I say this with what I hope is other than a hidebound, Hollywood-centric point of view, having seen motion pictures from a dozen other nations, and having known a fair number of French people in my life, some fairly closely. 5x2 (its title comes from there being five flashback segments to this film, all concerning two people) sounds on paper like a sure winner. It co-stars the talented Italian actress Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (she might be remembered by US film-goers from her cameo in Munich) as a quietly self-damning Frenchwoman named Marion, and like the recent American film Memento, 5x2 tells its story in reverse, commencing with an overdue divorce and concluding with the meeting of the couple around whom the tortured plot carelessly revolves. Sounds good, you're thinking? I, too, was of that optimistic expectation before I actually saw the film. 5x2 goes badly wrong early on and veers farther and farther off course. Its characters range from frustratingly foolish to absolutely despicable, and its vignettes into the lives and pasts of the couple at the story's heart are all held at arm's length to the point where we cannot warm to anyone or care about the apparent tragedy of their fates. The scene five minutes in where Gilles proceeds to rape his by then ex-wife was so horrendous the remaining 80-odd minutes of screen time seem merely diminished filler. If you have free time and money to spare, and you're a fan of European cinema, you might not feel this investment of ninety minutes is entirely wasted; however, in my view this film should be bypassed in favor of more worthy titles. If you've read this far and wish to know what the five segments in this film are, I'll list them here, spoilers and all. So if you think 5x2 sounds like your next DVD purchase, stop reading now. Part One: Gilles and Marion are seen in the opening moments finalizing their divorce with a Parisian magistrate as he irons out such details as custody of their young son, financial support, and living arrangements. The couple then check into a hotel and celebrate their divorce with plans of sex. (See what I mean? French whims don't translate all that well to American sensibilities. How many U.S. couples skip from divorce court to a gleeful tryst with one another?) What starts off consensual ends up as rape when Gilles, a boor throughout the forthcoming film, brutalizes Marion. Afterwards, as she is leaving, Gilles offers to forget the past and start over again. Marion merely closes the hotel room door, and leaves. (And instead of a fade-out as I'm sure virtually all other directors would have done, Ozon proceeds to pointlessly trail Marion down the hallways for the next half minute. Why I don't know.) Part Two: Their marriage is shown in its latter days, months before the concluding/opening segment, and Marion and Gilles are hosting Gilles' homosexual brother and his latest paramour for dinner. Relations between the married heterosexual couple are strained but each ignores this and pretends to be depthlessly interested in the goings-on in the lives of the brother character and his much-younger love-interest. The couples get stoned and drunk and the brother confides to Marion that though he spends his money readily enough, the young man with whom he is involved will not actually make love with him. Some heavy-handed foreshadowing of Gilles and Marion's own marital fate is tossed in. Part Three: In the ultimate example of what a jerk he is, Gilles will not travel to the hospital where Marion is having serious complications during the birth of their son. Why Marion tolerates Gilles is puzzling and I think it's meant to be. Part Four: The wedding night of Gilles and Marion is featured. The couple, half a decade or more younger than we see them in the opening divorce scene, appears in love and happy, and yet even then we see the roots of their future misery. Gilles drinks himself unconscious and passes out in bed before his marriage can be consummated. Marion, probably setting some sort of speed record for infidelity, goes outside, and in her anger makes love to an American man, by a lake right outside the hall where her wedding festivities are still going on. Part Five: While on holiday in an Italian coastal resort, a single Marion and a romantically attached Gilles first meet. They know one another slightly from past business relations and have an instant attraction. Though each tries to ignore the pull they feel, Gilles does eventually betray the trust of his girlfriend and becomes involved with Marion. The last scene is shot in sunshine with happy music, and in its attempt to portray the tragedy of what we know awaits the young lovers, it smacks too heavily of melodrama and simply doesn't work. By this time I, and I suspect many other astute viewers, were so disgusted by the weakness of this movie that we don't much care.

I want to point out right away that I thought Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi is excellent in this film. After just watching her rather low key performance as a police inspector in Claude Chabrol's The Color of Lies, she shows a dynamic emotional range that I wouldn't have thought her capable. It may be her acting skills have really been finely tuned in the 6 years between films, or it could have just been the way her unemotional character was written for Chabrol's film. Either way, she makes this very dark film, enlightening. The film portrays a 5 point timeline in the lives of one married couple just completing a divorce. The events are shown in reverse order: 1) the divorce, 2) nearing the end of their marriage, 3) the birth of their son, 4) their wedding night, and 5) when they first became attracted to each other. Breaking the film up into 5 segments actually seems to speed the film along, and breaks the monotony of what could otherwise have been just another talky, morality driven French film. I think the reverse order is a creative way to tell the tale, however, you ought to make sure the two last chapters (or first chapters) are strong enough to carry the weight of the end of the film. Unfortunately, the first 3 events are what makes this film, and it sadly tails off with the last 2. They are suppose to be the more upbeat time of the relationship, and should be the most satisfying of the film, but we are left with one that is very contrived, and the other rather dull. The opening divorce sequence is very moving, and opens the very dramatic first hour of the film. We quickly see how much of an a-hole Gilles (the husband) really is, and how seemingly sweet Marion is (that is, until the wedding night sequence). The next event is a time after their son looks to be about 6-years-old, and you can see the marriage isn't going very well. It features a scene with Gille's gay brother and his aloof younger boyfriend. You can see Marion beginning to break down at this point, and we do not seem very far away from what is to become in the opening sequence. The birth of their son features Gilles being a butthole again, and deliberately not being present for the delivery. While it is not clear how strained the marriage is at this point, it features some poignant scenes with Marion alone in the hospital. At one point, she is in tears on her cell phone speaking to Gilles, who still hasn't come to see her, and asks him to bring some things from home. I think it's the most effective moment in the film. That brings us to the last 2 moments, or the first 2 in their relationship. Up to this segment and right through to the end of the wedding ceremony, I felt this was playing out to be one superb film. Even in the darker tones of the first hour, I thought we were now getting into some juicy territory with the happier times in this couple's lives, and that this may play out to be one of the best French films I've seen in a long time. However, that all came crashing down with a preposterous turn of events on their wedding night. I won't give it away, but it features an offensively stereotypical, Marlboro smoking, American male character. Despite this rather cheap shot at portraying an American in a French film, it's not this character that disturbs me as much as how Tedeschi's character reacts in these scenes. There is nothing before or after this that would remotely lead anyone to believe that she would act this way. It is a very unfathomable scene, and literally crumbles the movie at this point. On to the last scene, where the couple first begin an attraction. What we have is a boring sequence where Gilles is on vacation with his girlfriend and meets Marion, a brief work related aquaintance, and seems to fall for her. There are NO sparks in these scenes and we are left with what should have been the best part of the film, being the dullest. There was a deleted scene called prologue, which featured a time just after they were married, and moving into a new home. I thought this was a great scene, and had it been included in the film, it would have been the brightest point, in this otherwise dreary relationship. Maybe Ozon didn't want to name it 6x2! I would have taken that sequence over the wedding night one or their first meeting. A brilliant film for the first hour, but a let down in the last 25 minutes. This could have been a strong film, with a failed relationship told in reverse order. Even with the gloomy tone of this troubled marriage, some stronger writing in the last key segments could have made this one impressive piece of cinema.

excellent thank you

Love and relationships are a strange thing. Whatever our views on the subject may be I think we can all agree, we all go into a relationship expecting the best. But, what if, through some magical power, we could tell how a relationship would turn out just by looking at that person? This is what I was thinking about as I watched this movie. The film tells the story of a couple that eventually falls out of love and gets a divorce, but the film's gimmick is it is all told backwards. It is not told "Memento" backwards, where each scene is followed by what happened earlier instead the movie is divided in five chapters which are told in reverse order; their divorce, a party scene, the birth of their child, their wedding and finally the first time they met. This is how the movie gets its title. Five chapters about two people, get it? The movie is directed by Francois Ozon and I think it may be his best film. Here Ozon is dealing with characters and situations I can relate to. It is not the brainteaser "Swimming Pool" was or the fun silly lark "8 Woman" was either. Aesthecially and intelluctally this movie is better than the rest. If anything his "Under the Sand" may be of the same quality. The couple is played by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (Marion) and Stephane Freiss (Gilles) neither is an actor I can recall seeing in anything else but it doesn't matter. It helped me believe in these people even more. In the opening scenes we can sense a lot of intensity, a lot of disgust and resentment seems to be in the air. As we watch we wonder what could have lead to this? But as the movie goes on, I found, that these people never really belonged together in the first. Which leads me back to my original thought, what if we had a magical way of knowing how a relationship would end? Would we use it? Some would argue no, meeting someone new and experiencing where things go is half the excitment and also what makes us grow. That may be true but I wonder if Marion and Gilles would agree? Bottom-line: Francois Ozon most effective film. It is a movie that is about more than its gimmick, it has a genuine deep story involving love and relationships.

Excellent and well made movie. I love it, nice cover. Recommend it highly.