Mjeteconer Just perfect...

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Taha Avalos The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Ella-May O'Brien 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.

dromasca Having liked the last film of Francois Ozon ('Dans la maison') as well as some of his previous work I jumped on the opportunity of seeing one of his earlier works screened at the local cinematheque. '5x2' is based on an interesting idea - telling the story of a relationship in five episodes backwards, from its breaking in divorce to the moment of the ignition, although the idea was not completely new by 2004 when the film was made, as Christopher Nolan's Memento was made in 2000 and Gaspar Noe's Irreversible in 2002. Although Noe's film was also telling the story of a relationship, both predecessors were much more violent films. I almost have the feeling that Francois Ozon tried to experiment the same technique of story telling and picked on purpose a quite banal relationship story, broke it into episodes and told it a la reverse, experimenting with the output. Can a director tell a nicer and softer story this way? Will it gain in interest? Will the perspective change because of the story telling technique? The answer to the last question is 'somehow, yes'. The story of the eventually failed relation between Marion (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi) and Gilles (Stephane Freiss) has nothing extraordinary by itself, it's a rather banal encounter of mid-class professionals, they fall for each other, they marry, they have a child, betrayals and occasional sex games throw some ambiguity in their lives, the parents may or may not influence the couple, and eventually the marriage does not hold, as half of the marriages facing similar crisis do not hold, while the other half do. The technique of telling the story changes the pace - by making us anticipate what happened BEFORE and not AFTER, after we realize the trick - and the eventual feeling - by telling us the first encounter last the ultimate impression is positive, despite the fact that as viewers we know that in the real logic of time the story does not end well. The director however decided here to reverse time and by doing this, the happy beginning turned into some kind of a happy end.Good acting supports the director's intention. Both lead actors are credible, they play in a sincere and direct manner, and I suspect that if I had seen the variant where time runs normally (actually Ozon made such a variant) I would have been slightly disappointed. '5x2' is an apparently simple exercise in story-telling which is smarter than it first seems.

paul2001sw-1 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.

FilmCriticLalitRao A French film cannot be called a "French Film" unless it does not contain all essential elements of French culture.These elements include love,sex,marriage,divorce etc.Five times two is a complete French film as it has included all of these indispensable elements in its narrative structure.This film has to be appreciated by all those who feel that French cinema has a significant air of intellectualism. By making a poetic film about 5 memorable moments of a happy couple's life,talented French cinéaste François Ozon has given us a glimpse of how emotional matters are handled by French people.Five times two can also be termed as a modern European/French film whose success rests on its actors.A mention must be made of two leading actors Stéphane Freiss and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi who make valiant attempts in the film to be true to each other.They exhibit ferocity in all of their actions whether it concerns their bitterness or sexuality.A film like this one is made with great intuition.It is for serious viewers to appreciate the efforts of the filmmaker.A good viewer will not be disappointed when he/she watches this film.

leplatypus This movie wasted my time. Writing this review will not repeat this & I hope it will be useful for any potential viewers to know what they risk:The story is a reverse romance: from the ending to the meeting! But the morality of the couple is very loose: from rape to cheating (on wedding day!), among group sex or missing the child birth...Here's the menu delivered by a French "culturally correct" director.What's bothering me is the lack of his involvement: what's his message ? Maybe he dares to see what can happen under the veneer of relationships, but he offers no solution when bad things comes...Every one could have tell the same things. For a "talented" director, the audience can ask for more: so easy thus so forgettable !