I apologise, we feel bad, but there's no trailer available. ~Ed.
Intense in places, rather depressing, and in the end only mildly enjoyable.
Two people, five moments from a marriage told in reverse: there's a neat simplicity to François Ozon's chamber piece that promises but doesn't deliver great insight into modern relationships. Beginning with Gilles (Stéphane Freiss) and Marion (Valéria Bruni-Tedeschi) as they sign their divorce papers then 'backtracking' back to key moments in their life together, Ozon's film is a slyly ironic take on affairs of the heart. Like Irreversible - but without the jolts - it's proof that time does indeed destroy all things...
An anatomy of a disintegrating marriage, this is the work of French director Francois Ozon, who made the promising but ultimately very silly Swimming Pool (in this film's final scene he recycles swimming as a metaphor for romance). The trick is that the story is told in reverse: the opening cold and perfunctory divorce hearing is the first of five vignettes (hence the title) that will take us back to the lovers' meeting...
The back-to-front narrative structure of Francois Ozon's scenes from the dissolution of a marriage isn't new or unique -- Harold Pinter's "Betrayal" is probably the best known cinematic use of the device and Gaspare Noe's "Irreversible" is the most recent -- but Ozon applies it with sensitivity and resonance. Opening on the divorce of Marion (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) and Gilles (Stephane Freiss), a dispassionate legal ritual followed by a last fling of petty power games, and working back to the first inkling of romance (tellingly during his vacation with his longtime girlfriend), it's both a remembrance and a post-mortem in five acts...
Francois Ozon is a miniaturist. Like so many French directors, he's in love with faces.
In the past, he's been lucky enough to have the heavy-lidded gaze of Charlotte Rampling to focus on. She was the star of two of his films, Under the Sand and Swimming Pool.
But it's not just the Rampling effect which excites him. In 5x2, the anatomy of a modern French marriage, he brings the same measure of concentration to bear on the film's stars, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi and Stephane Freiss...
A relatively sober, deftly told tale of coupledom for grown-ups, "5x2" starts on the day a divorce is pronounced and works its way backward, alighting on important moments in the relationship. Excellent perfs and writer-director Francois Ozon's sure, unfussy way with the camera add up to a viewing experience whose richness depends in large part on how much the viewer reads into the human templates on display. Pre-sold in many territories on the strength of Ozon's reputation, pic, which competes in Venice the day after its Sept. 1 opening in France, should perform reasonably well in Gaul and beyond...
We've been told the NZ release date for this flick is Thursday, 29th Jun 2006.
Release date: June 29th 2006.
We haven't received times for this movie in this location yet. However these are updated as cinemas announce them, so check back soon. Hopefully the lovely cinemas in your location will choose to play it shortly. ~Ed.
