Five Times Two (2005)

Stylish but barely mediocre overall

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

5x2 was my second Francois Ozon film, and as much as I enjoyed the English speaking 'Swimming Pool', I was pleasantly surprised to find a very different film in 5x2. The two share some themes of sexuality, passion, temptation and insincerity, but while Swimming Pool is a dark psychological piece, 5x2 is realistic - so realistic, in fact, that it might hit far to close to home for many viewers.The format of a story told backwards has been done many times before - Irreversible, Memento, and much earlier than that Harold Pinter's 'Betrayal' are all notable examples. The effect is quite different in 5x2. Rather than create mysteries and then gradually revealing the answers, each scene in 5x2 sheds new light on previous ones, while the shadow of the earlier scenes is always on the latter (chronologically earlier) ones, creating an effect that would make the film almost too painful to watch a second time. The story is extremely realistic and relatable, and there are no shocking revelations throughout; the film's strength is in its subtle simplicity, which makes it seem unimpressive while you're watching it but stay on your mind for a long time after. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Stéphane Freiss create real, relatable, likable but very flawed characters that bring the story to life, a story about love, sex and marriage that is sincere and real in a way that American films hardly ever comes close to.

Anyone who knows director Francois Ozon only for his daft musical comedy 'Eight Women' might be rather shocked by the first scene of this movie, a nasty moment of post-marital rape. The film consists of five episodes in a couple's life (hence the title), the obvious point for comparison is Bergman's 'Scenes from a Marriage', and the novelty is that we see the episodes in reverse order. After watching the first one, I was filled with dread at the horrors I would witness thereafter, seeing the poison creep into the relationship, with a growing theme of retrospectively false hope - I thought this would be a very harrowing movie. Instead, none of this happens. Ozon samples the marriage more than tells its full story, many of the scenes hint at the subtle complexity of the relationship between man and wife, but this is not a narrative of destruction, just a collection of snapshots from two lives. There are moments of perception, others seem less adept (I didn't believe the American businessman, for example); but whereas Bergman seemed to show character as destiny, here there's an incidental quality to the plot, and though I enjoyed the movie, ultimately I wasn't quite sure of its point.

The film 5 X 2 is a series of troubling scenes from a marriage, told in reverse order. It moves from a rather passionless, but painful divorce proceeding, through some violent goodbye sex, a plea for reconciliation by the former husband, all the way to the moment that they fell in love. Between those extremes they were never very good to each other for any length of time. The husband, Gilles, being aggressively cruel, while the wife, Marion, is passively cruel to her spouse. The motives and motivations behind these actions are never significantly explained and the viewer is left to fill in the blank spaces.Being puzzled by the ambiguity of some of the events in the film (Just Like Swimming Pool), I went to the deleted scenes and found a prologue that was not included in the final cut of the film. The scene implies that the couple at some point reconcile and are again living together. Marion awakes and moves about the home that is piled with moving boxes. She goes to one box and removes a book "Histoire d'O" (The Story of O) and a scarf. For those who are unaware, this a book about sadomasochism/dominance and submission, and a woman's experiences with it. Reading a bit of the book, she puts it down and goes to make coffee. She later re-enters the room, finds Gilles reading the same book, sneaks up behind him and blindfolds him with the scarf, while kissing him. Gilles removes the scarf and uses it to bind her hands behind her. They begin the preliminaries of lovemaking but part instead. They end up laying side by side, looking at their surroundings, glancing at one another.This scene implies that the individuals have made personal growth and had come to recognize that their previous marriage had been based on dominance and submission and neither of them wished to return to the sadomasochistic relationship of their past. It also implies, as they both look about, neither of them really have any idea where to begin, if this is not to be the nature of their new relationship. Of course, knowing what you don't want is a start of sorts. It's a great scene, quiet, somber and reflective. More importantly, it is hopeful. Hopeful, that even damaged people can learn and grow. It's too bad that it did not make the final cut of the film. What we do have in the film is probably more realistic--all too often love ends--but hopefully we do take something better to our next beginning. The final scene in 5 x 2 reminds each of us just how beautiful love can be. It is worth a viewing for that reason alone.

François Ozon (Swimming Pool, Under the Sand, 8 Women, Water Drops on Burning Rocks, etc) is a French director with a style of telling stories that is entirely his own. He seems to revel in challenging the audience to participate intellectually and emotionally in the common stories through which we daily walk. He doesn't strive for 'the big moment' or startling revelations: he is content to place a tale before us to encourage us to re-think our own existence, our parallel lives with those of his characters.'Cinq fois deux' (5X2) is a study of a couple who meet, fall in love, marry, have a child, and divorce. But the story is told in reverse: we begin during a meeting with the lawyers who present to Marion (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) a successful business woman, and to Gilles (Stéphane Freiss) and equally successful businessman the papers outlining their divorce settlement. All seems calm, yet after the signing the couple appears in a hotel room for one last sexual encounter that speaks volumes about their finished relationship. From that scene we move into the life they shared as a married couple with one child, a family that seems perfect, yet during a dinner party with Gilles' gay brother Christophe (Antoine Chappey) and his lover Mathieu (Marc Ruchmann) we begin to see parallels of relationship fallacies. We step back further to the wedding of Marion and Gilles where Marion's parents likewise illustrate marriages with both the sour and semi-sweet sides and the cards are on the table. And on their wedding night Gilles falls asleep on their marital bed and the frustrated Marion falls into the arms of an American stranger (Jason Tavassoli). A step further back to the courting days reveals more dissident threads, and finally the couple's original meeting at a seaside resort where Gilles is retreating with his then girlfriend Valérie (Géraldine Pailhas) suggests patterns of behavior that, knowing the ending because it was the beginning of the film, bring the audience into the realm of understanding.The cast is excellent, the lovemaking scenes are seductive and well filmed, and the transitions for the retrograde story are smooth and intriguing. The film allows us to examine three sets of relationships in detail and in doing so gives us insight as to just why trust is so important to success. Recommended. Grady Harp