Peeling a relationship back from its unhappy endpoint is a merciless way to look at things, and “5×2” doesn’t spare anything in looking at a marriage gone wrong.
| Less than compelling: Anatomy of an unhappy marriage, seen in five long sequences told in reverse order. Director Francois Ozon may have miscalculated the gimmick, but Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi gives a heroic performance. (In French, with English subtitles.)
Rated: R rating is for nudity, language, violence. Now showing: Varsity. |
It’s a coincidence that “5×2” (I guess the title means five scenes by two people) is opening the same day as Ingmar Bergman’s “Saraband,” as both movies grimly dissect man-woman tensions. This one just goes backwards.
In five long scenes, beginning with the signing of divorce papers, we witness the decisive moments in the marriage of Marion and Gilles. They go from the lawyer’s office to a hotel room for a final, brutal and initially inexplicable sexual liaison.
Then we reel back in time: through infidelity, through parenthood, through the wedding day itself, and finally to their first fling. Because we’ve seen the rotten end of things, even the early days of flirtation are covered in shadows.
This mordant little number comes from director Francois Ozon, whose varied career includes the marvelous guessing-game movie “Swimming Pool” and the campy musical “8 Women.” It is safe to say that Ozon has a jaundiced view of humankind, and he expresses that here.
The reverse-order storytelling, which can be quite poignant in a film such as “Betrayal,” might have a different purpose here. For instance, because of the way we watch the movie, it’s almost impossible for Gilles to be seen as anything other than a complete reprobate and Marion as a victim.
If you see the movie as containing “Swimming Pool”-like clues, however, there are some hints late in the game that Marion is not faultless in the relationship, either. Such a reading doesn’t make Gilles sympathetic, but at least it gives people something to talk about after the film.
That’s interesting, but it doesn’t necessarily make the film scintillating to watch. Ozon may have miscalculated the effect of his gimmick.
The casting, too, is unbalanced. Stephane Freiss isn’t compelling as Gilles, whereas Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, a wonderfully watchable actress, is fascinating as Marion. That makes the movie not so much “5×2” as “5×1 and 1/2.”
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