X2000

First morning of 2000. A naked man , a woman in sleep, a couple who makes sex, twin brothers in a nook, ants and the woman in bathroom. 8 minutes and brief dialog.

"X2000" is a brilliant self-definition of Ozon's art. The slices of silence, the gestures, the sound of words,the light and discoveries are parts of a same game with the public, a provocation but, in many occasions, a subversive existential question.

At first sight, this film is a Rene Magritte 's works. Or piece of a film about crisis or disputes, sins and marriage.

In fact, it is one Francois Ozon sample. Ironic, subtle and sarcastic, with images from surrealism and trap for sensitivity of a special audience, with traces of expressionism and kitsch, with an dark humor and exploration of world, people, reactions and silences as entomologist.

"X2000" is key for "Piscine", "Sitcom" or "8 femmes". Definition of existence in terms of skeptical vision and childish curiosity for explore the bones of illusions.

Twoo characters are presents in this film: the search and the ants. The desire to discover the sense of things/life/gesture and the sense in pure form. And then- the protective shadow of anxiety.

So, a magnificent short- film about nothing. Or a good occasion for self introspection.

The art as mute cry.

This short film chronicles a man's discovery around his flat, after he wakes up from the new year party of the new millennium.

"X2000" is a minimalistic short film. It is just six minutes long, and the remaining two minutes are credits. It shows how the man wakes up, walking around the flat completely naked. He sees two men cuddled up in a sleeping bag. He sees a couple having sex in the opposite building. His girlfriend gets into a bath. Then he sees something under the bin. Such trivial everyday happenings are shown, and the purpose of the film is left for the viewer to interpret. I notice, the man looks very dazed with vacant stares towards the front, so maybe he is under the influence. Another interpretation I made is the disappointment of the girlfriend after she walks into the living room, seeing the man against the window.

A very short film of 8 minutes.It's morning and the characters are sleeping it off after a New Year's Eve party. We all know the feeling and understandably there is little dialogue. Francois Ozon who wrote and directed the film has his naked characters wandering listlessly around the high-rise apartment. While drinking his "Alka-Seltzer" the man watches a couple engaging in sex in a neighbouring apartment. When he drops his glass and gathers up the broken pieces he spots a crawling mass of large black ants underneath the kitchen bin. He seems dazed at the sight of them and exclaims to his girl friend that the ants are attacking. Francois Ozon is in one of his teasing moods, I think. He only tells so much, leaves so much unsaid. It's strange when you come to think of it that the ants could appear on the umpteenth storey, and do they have any significance? I think Ozon is leaving it to each of us to finish off the film as we would have it. As it is, it's just an unfinished fragment begging for an ending!l

This little waking-up-the-day-after short is, once again, a testimony to how audaciously confident Ozon is in his film-making abilities. As with most of his shorts, this one is subversive - it seems very disjointed and unfinished, but it's actually very cleverly constructed, with a beginning, middle and an end.

There seems to be two very distinct arcs to the career of Francois Ozon. On the one hand, we have a cinema of reference, with films like Sitcom (1998), Water Drops on Burning Rocks (2000) and 8 Women (2002) taking influence from the disparate likes of Buñuel, Fassbinder, Sirk and Minnelli. On the other hand we have a cinema of examination, with projects like Under the Sand (2000), Swimming Pool (2003) and 5x2 (2004) looking at characters trapped-insect like beneath a distancing sheet of glass and dealing exclusively with heavily-wrought personal issues devoid of the more obvious fun and frivolity. X 2000 (1998), an eight minute project about time, perspective and pre-millennium tensions, would seem to be closer in tone to the latter approach; with the sense of wit and humour of some of the director's more colourful works being replaced by an almost Haneke-like feeling of cold, clinical abstraction.

At the minimal eight minutes in length this is obviously something that will be seen, quite rightly, as a vague sketch of a work; one that feels unfinished and unfocused or indeed, as an early experiment into the same thematic territory of Swimming Pool and 5x2. The plot, as discussed by other reviewers, is slight to the point of seeming nonexistence; a vague accumulation of scenes intended to create a greater whole, as opposed to a sense of cohesion. It does tell a story, though one that remains indistinct and enigmatic; entirely undone by the subtly of Ozon's direction and the broad opportunities of interpretation offered by the particular use of iconography. In my mind, it is a film about looking and seeing. Or not seeing? Regardless, there is an interesting germ of an idea presented in this short film wherein the central character looks without necessarily intending to look, and discovers things. In the first instance, there's the sight of a women bathing from his apartment window. In the second, he discovered a colony of ants in his kitchen.

Alongside these images there are allusions to the constant sex and death motif, with naked forms in a still and silent embrace, and further ideas of cleansing, confusion, freedom and alienation. These issues are conflicting and contradictory, thrown together in a jumble but clearly leading to something with meaning. Perhaps all of this is pointing towards the kind of revelations eventually discovered in a film like Swimming Pool, with its notions of sight and perception, seeing without looking, looking without finding, etc. Again, at eight minutes, X 2000 is far too slight to really dig any deeper or find the answers that we're looking for, but regardless, there's something undeniable fascinating about the film and about the way in which Ozone has carefully put it together.