not horrible nor great

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Good movie. Serious. I like it. And the scenario is very good. Music is super! i've downloaded soundtrack... By submitting this comment you are agreeing to the terms laid out in our Copyright Statement. Your submission must be your own original work. Your comments will normally be posted on the site within 2-3 business days. Comments that do not meet the guidelines will not be posted. Please write in English only. HTML or boards mark-up is not supported though paragraph breaks will be inserted if you leave a blank line between paragraph. By submitting this comment you are agreeing to the terms laid out in our Copyright Statement. Your submission must be your own original work. Your comments will normally be posted on the site within 2-3 business days. Comments that do not meet the guidelines will not be posted. Please write in English only. HTML or boards mark-up is not supported though paragraph breaks will be inserted if you leave a blank line between paragraph.

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.

Francois Ozon's movies are quickly achieving that reputation of being ambiguous in ending, but poignant and deeply reflective. Right now there are few directors who are allowing themselves to produce features that allow them to move freely within the world of the story, re-configure it, and present it in a new way that may shed light as to what really is taking place, and even if it means anything in particular. It is possible that some audiences will be getting tired by the use of style -- in this case, telling a story backward, a plot device used most notably in Christopher Nolan's smash 2000 debut film MEMENTO. But when you look at it, it's not so much the story as the feeling of irony that keeps getting stronger and stronger until it is a force of nature equivalent to the Category 5 hurricane that destroys a marriage and further inflicts damage by imposing that "one last time" sexual encounter in an anonymous hotel. Maybe Marion (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, heartbreaking and luminous) and Gilles (Stephane Freiss) were never meant to be together in the first place. Their backwards story, so pregnant in what isn't being said, what isn't being expressed, and what the two seem to be going through, is crystal clear: from the get-go, despite that illusion of the Sun setting over the horizon, they were doomed. Something crucial is missing between them -- a something that rears its ugly head in two key moments of their lives. First, the day Marion gives birth to their son. Gilles for some reason cannot be there when she goes into labor nor when she talks on the phone with him after it's all over. Her argument with her parents is only a hint of what we've seen earlier: the crumbling of their marriage in screams and a rape scene. Second, their wedding night, when Gilles falls asleep when he should be enjoying this blissful moment with Marion and has her exiting the hotel, looking for a substitute even when a moral part of her yells at her with exclamation points what she's doing is wrong. In fact, Gilles seems to be sabotaging his chance at happiness at every turn, and it's hard not to see Marion's face subtly change expressions when he tells his brother Christophe and his young lover (late in their marriage, early in the movie) that Marion and he participated in an orgy where he had sex in every possible way. There's just a hint here, that he couldn't see himself living with her. He is, in fact, the person who states that Christophe is headed for disaster with his new lover. Of course, the last blow he inflicts on Marion will be the most painful one (and Ozon never strays from showing it in its ugliness).If only we all could turn back time and go to that perfect moment when all was well under the aegis of the Sun setting over the golden sea.... 5 x 2 makes the viewer wonder what we could do, should we have the power to go back and revisit that tender moment. Another masterpiece of storytelling from Francois Ozon, stark, naked, ugly, but sadly beautiful.

Justso you think I care about how much sex. There are 5 episodes, and basically each of them is about sex. But the deteriorating relationship between the two people amounts to growing frustration by the wife. It is hard to understand why the husband would not show up at the birth of his child (or at the hospital later), but it is at least easier to understand that she was frustrated on her wedding night. The story is just an epiphany for the viewer about how much she put up with, from the very beginning. It is the reverse depiction of the deterioration of the relationship. But really it was bad from the beginning, it just took her so long to come to the feeling that he was who he was and was not going to change and he was totally self-controlled. But, this is the story. The cinematography was well done, the dialog very sophisticated.