Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Marriage breakdown in reverse. Excellent French film.., 7 Jan 2006
By A Customer
Marriage breakdown in reverse. Excellent French film..
5 x 2 ( Cinq fois Deux)This is a very interesting and gripping French film to be highly recommended. It describes in reverse order scenes from a marriage, which ends in divorce. I thought it a wonderful film with much food for thought but it may not be appeal to everyone. It leaves issues tantalisingly unresolved for instance what went wrong with the relationship. We are left to decide for ourselves from a variety of factors on either side. This I think makes it more interesting and like real life.
The film starts with a scene of the judge at the divorce reading without emotion the divorce statement. He describes the marriage in bare terms of interest to the state, property, money childcare etc. As he reads on we see in front of the judge the faces of the couple (Marion (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) and Gilles (Stéphane Freiss) who are silently listening and eventually diffidently agreeing to the terms. We as yet do not know them but naturally start to wonder about them as people and try to understand them. We try to give our sympathies to one or the other or both. The film encourages this by going backwards in time to 5 episodes of their life together. These are the divorce, a family meal with Gilles’s brother and his boy friend discussing infidelity and relationships. Marion’s pregnancy and childbirth, the marriage itself and finally there is the first holiday meeting of the couple. Thus the title 5 x 2! That is five episodes of a partnership.
The style of the film changes from the intense psychological drama of the first episode as in a Bergman film to the riotous group and individual happiness of the wedding. Then it reaches the romantic scenes of their first meeting more like a Rohmer film or a Lelouche film, As the director (Francois Ozon) says, in real life when a relationship breaks up we concentrate on the last episode and forget what went before. To follow it in reverse is fascinating. The acting is excellent and a bonus to have veteran actors Michel Bernard and Francoise Fabian as the warring parents of Marion.
Marion and Gilles remain enigmatic but engaging to the end (or the beginning).
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Marriage breakdown in reverse. Excellent French film.., 7 Jan 2006
By A Customer
This is a very interesting and gripping French film to be highly recommended. It describes in reverse order scenes from a marriage, which ends in divorce. I thought it a wonderful film with much food for thought but it may not be appeal to everyone. It leaves issues tantalisingly unresolved for instance what went wrong with the relationship. We are left to decide for ourselves from a variety of factors on either side. This I think makes it more interesting and like real life.
The film starts with a scene of the judge at the divorce reading without emotion the divorce statement. He describes the marriage in bare terms of interest to the state, property, money childcare etc. As he reads on we see in front of the judge the faces of the couple (Marion (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) and Gilles (Stéphane Freiss) who are silently listening and eventually diffidently agreeing to the terms. We as yet do not know them but naturally start to wonder about them as people and try to understand them. We try to give our sympathies to one or the other or both. The film encourages this by going backwards in time to 5 episodes of their life together. These are the divorce, a family meal with Gilles’s brother and his boy friend discussing infidelity and relationships. Marion’s pregnancy and childbirth, the marriage itself and finally there is the first holiday meeting of the couple. Thus the title 5 x 2! That is five episodes of a partnership.
The style of the film changes from the intense psychological drama of the first episode as in a Bergman film to the riotous group and individual happiness of the wedding. Then it reaches the romantic scenes of their first meeting more like a Rohmer film or a Lelouche film, As the director (Francois Ozon) says, in real life when a relationship breaks up we concentrate on the last episode and forget what went before. To follow it in reverse is fascinating. The acting is excellent and a bonus to have veteran actors Michel Bernard and Francoise Fabian as the warring parents of Marion.
Marion and Gilles remain enigmatic but engaging to the end (or the beginning).
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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Dull verging on pretentious., 24 Sep 2007
The heroine at one point has sex with a stranger on her wedding night. In a deleted scene, the American stranger, on learning that she was the bride, says: "That's so French!"
It's an apt description of the whole film: meandering, noodling, pointless scenes from a rather ordinary story of an ultimately failing love affair. Putting the 5 segments in reverse-chronological order does not raise this dull film to a higher level. (Contrast "Irreversible", which, if you can stomach it, achieves much greater effect by this device.)
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