5x2

Go for a beer with an older, married or divorced friend and you'll have this at first hand, free of charge and without the disappointment that comes with uninteresting filmmaking. Ozon wrote and filmed his fictional “marriage documentary” like a TV movie – formalistically modest and uninteresting, boring and lacking in content. At least films like Intimacy and The Piano Teacher were about something. This film is about nothing and the only thing that pushes it along is the well-crafted psychological moments, which go nowhere – in a fully developed and well-written film, such moments are “only” the glue that holds the actual drama together. However, the actors are pleasantly realistic throughout and the movie has a very nice ending. (24.03.2005)

I can't help but feel like 5x2 was a theater play the whole time. That was mainly because the director and screenwriter François Ozon conceived the film in five acts, each of which presented two identical people. However, whether it is the initial divorce (in reverse chronological order), raising the son, his birth, the wedding, or the final encounter, every time it feels like the viewer is witnessing completely different people. Yet there was something missing in these five main points of marital cohabitation. I missed the coherence of the plot that unfolding before my eyes. In fact, the scenes could be used as a good basis for a TV miniseries, rather than as a single feature film. The connection between them is left for the viewer to imagine, and although it's not difficult to do so – Ozon truly excelled as a director – this "connection" should have been the main focal point of his "pushing the envelope." This leaves the viewer with five episodes to watch without the slightest interest, because the film as a whole lacks any atmosphere and any "focal point" in which we could form a relationship with the characters. In fact, this film is so self-absorbed and self-indulgent that it doesn't really need anything or anyone, including the viewer. And that's really as solid as 5x2 equaling 10. That’s too bad because something could have been done with the one. (08.07.2005)

Whether the characters are getting to know each other, taking, suffering, or divorcing, they behave so foolishly that not even the most contradictory psyche or life obstacles can excuse it. It's hard to believe that a film that delves so deeply into the intimacy of a relationship can be so unpleasantly cold and alienated. (19.02.2006)