Can a marriage be understood better by watching its history unfold in reverse?
In short: François Ozon’s 2004 film 5x2 deconstructs a middle-class relationship by presenting five pivotal moments in reverse chronological order. By starting with the legal finality of a divorce and ending at the couple's first meeting on an Italian beach, the film challenges how we perceive the trajectory of love and inevitable disintegration.
The narrative structure of 5x2, which Ozon credits as being partially inspired by Jane Campion’s 1986 film Two Friends, serves as a mechanism for a lucid examination of a couple's history. By moving backward, the audience is forced to confront the aftermath of events before witnessing their origins. The film begins in a lawyer's office during a separation, followed by a hotel encounter, a tense dinner party where infidelity is revealed, the birth of a son that Gilles missed, and finally, the wedding day and the initial meeting at an Italian resort.
Ozon deliberately uses romantic Italian love songs throughout the film to create a jarring contrast. He specifically selected these tracks for their over-the-top sentimentality, intending to offset the inherent darkness of the scenes. This tonal dissonance is mirrored in the performances, particularly in a hotel sequence involving Stéphane Freiss and Valeria Bruni Tedeschi. While the screenplay simply noted that the characters 'make love,' the actors delivered a performance so intense that Ozon later admitted he had not expected such a raw level of commitment.
Critical reception of the film has been generally favorable, though not universally acclaimed. It holds a 65% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 68 reviews, with a consensus describing it as a poignant presentation of a marriage. Metacritic awarded it a score of 62 out of 100, indicating generally favorable reviews. Peter Bradshaw, writing for The Guardian, praised the work as a shrewd and compassionate essay on the secret theatre of relationships, highlighting the film's ability to strip away the facade of a partnership to reveal the complex, often painful mechanics hidden beneath the surface of a long-term commitment.
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