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The 'reverse chronology' format, that has now been tried and tested a few times, will perhaps one day become as unshockingly acceptable as the more prosaic use of 'flashbacks'. Both involve non-linear storytelling, and both attempt to grab audience attention by time distortions. Flashbacks are now so commonplace within mainstream films that the 'purist' Dogme movement banned them altogether – being so structurally clichéd and rarely justified. So when Ozon's 5 x 2 tells a love story about two people in five chapters, but starting with the last chapter and working forward, is he using a valid artistic device or just being gimmicky? In the opening scene, our loving couple (Marion and Gilles) are finalising the details of their divorce. Afterwards they have a last-fling sexual bout which takes an unpleasant turn. Flipping back scene by scene, we next see them as a loving married and entertaining visitors, chatting away about fidelity and sexual deviance and again we see a slightly unpleasant turn – perhaps the seeds of the divorce that we already know will happen. In each chapter we follow the love story to earlier and earlier stages.

In Irreversible, another French film, the reverse chronology format was used to shock, to take us on a journey from hell to heaven. In Memento it was used to heighten suspense and provide the basic device that the mystery revolved upon – we never knew more than the main character about what had happened before.

In 5 x 2 the effect is to highlight small things that go wrong in a fairly ordinary relationship. If it were a gradual decline from better to worse they might have gone unnoticed, but our starting point being divorce our interest in why things went wrong is perhaps more acute.

The other thing that marks out this slightly unusual film is the remarkable acting range shown by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (who won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival for her portrayal of Marion). We see not only an incredible range of emotion but many sides to her character. The finely nuanced performance draws attention to things like the person a woman may be to her husband whilst still have a secret side, or her ability to put on a brave face when crying inside. The observation of a range of emotional and sexual explorations is done with the attention to detail that seems so intrinsic to much French cinema: the characters really seem to feel what is happening as if there is no camera on them at all. Sadly 5 x 2 however may not have the shock value of film like Irreversible or the sugar-candy feelgood factor of films like Amelie: mainstream foreign audiences like their French movies to nevertheless fulfil certain passive entertainment criteria, which this thinking and understated movie obstinately refuses to do.

5x2 comes as a slight let-down following director Francois Ozon's recent critical and commercial success with Swimming Pool.Ozon's decision to structure the film in an anti-linear fashion is nothing original and he himself admits he was influenced by Jane Campion's little-known TV film Two Friends (1985) which used the same structure. Ozon chooses 5 crucial scenes from the life of Marion and Gilles, a middle-class couple with a son, Nicholas, whose married life quickly disintegrates into divorce. Ozon begins with the austere divorce, finishing with the moment this would-be-couple met.

The reverse structure allows the viewer to consider what went wrong and decipher why the marriage ended so bitterly. It is fairly obvious the reasons why they divorced, but Ozon and his frequent collaborator, Emmanuelle Bernhein, are as interested in the psychological worlds of these two people as their mundane reality.

The film works for the most part, but some scenes are unbelievable: Gilles's boastful confession at the party with his brother; the scene in the woods with Marion and an American tourist. These scenes undermine the subtle nature Ozon employs elsewhere. He explains too much, which isn't his style. A better edit would have made this an even better film.

As for the music, the corny 1960's Italian love songs used to close each segment are plain awful. The triviality of the songs might offer an ironic counterbalance to what is happening on screen, but the effect is of a sneering, sardonic detachment on behalf of the director. It's as if Ozon wants to dismiss every aspect of romantic culture as a fallacy.The best musical segment is at the end where Ozon's longtime composer Philippe Rombi returns some panache to the film's audio sensibilities. Special mention should go to Paolo Conte's haunting Sparring Partner which is used in the dinner scene and in the final credits.

The acting is excellent,and the closing frame is a masterstroke.But it doesn't merit that many repeat viewings as his earlier Swimming Pool did.

This film is about 5 segments of the relationship between Gilles and Marion in reverse chronological order.

I thought the reverse chronological order would make it as confusing as "Memento", but actually it is very simple to understand. The film highlights 5 different time segments that is pivotal to the relationship. What happens in between the segments is not mentioned. It leaves the viewers much room for imagination and interpretation.

It is a story about real human beings. No one is flawless. The carnal desire of Gilles, and his shameless expression of it, destroys his love life. Valerie's passionless attitude and negativity destroys her relationship. Marion, on the other hand, gets repeatedly disappointed with life. Everything in the film is so real and close to us, unlike most films that portray fairytale couples or unrealistic lives.

I particularly like the childbirth segment, as emotions are well portrayed and affecting. I think this film is good, but not as groundbreaking as I expected it to be.

The reverse chronology brings together what all too often tears us apart, wait it's love, love that tears us apart. Marriage really is a different thing altogether.

The film feels to a degree like flipping through old photographs, nostalgia is a form of pain, right? What was interesting was to see the actors really portraying quite different characters in the five sets, although had I seen the French Remix where the scenes are re-reversed, perhaps it would have all seemed more fated and just an unwrapping of a bitter, broken wedding gift.

I did wonder if the movie was filmed in proper chronological order.

There is something about maid Marion's parents, that is placed on a very tiny pedestal, without much explanation. I found compassion in watching Valerie Bruni-Tedeschi here...while her lesser half did not get much of a fair chance at redemption.

All of us, and all of our partners are flawed. But perhaps not all relationships are fatally flawed. Find someone emotionally compatible and give it a shot, maybe savor the best memories periodically. Good luck...

The end and beginning of the love of the French couple Marion (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) and Gilles (Stéphane Freiss) is disclosed backwards through five moments in their lives:

1st moment: They divorce and have one last brutal intercourse without love.

2nd moment: With their relationship shaken, they have a dinner party with Gilles's gay brother Christophe (Antoine Chappey) and his younger mate, when an infidelity is disclosed at the dinner table.

3rd moment: The troubled pregnancy of Marion and the delivery of their premature son Nicolas, with the total absence of Giles.

4th moment: Their wedding, when Marion commits adultery with an unknown guest of the hotel.

5th moment: .When they meet each other in an Italian resort and begin their relationship.

This simple and realistic movie recalls "Irreversible" (2002), since the screenplay discloses five moments of the relationship of a couple chronologically backwards. I believe the first intention of François Ozon is to remember that behind every divorce, there is a couple that loved each other in the past, that decided to marry each other expecting to live together and raise a family of their own. However, relationships usually deteriorate and time destroys everything including love. In these fragmented glimpses of the lives of Marion and Gilles, the viewer does not see exactly when their love ended, but after their initial encounter, there are many signs suggesting the beginning of the end: the adultery of Marion in the wedding night; the absence of Gilles in the birth of his son; his consented participation in an orgy in the presence of Marion, visibly showing one sort of last attempt to save their empty marriage. Further to the good screenplay, the outstanding and strong performances of the sexy Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi and Stéphane Freiss give the credibility to the characters. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Amor em 5 Tempos" ("Love in 5 Times")

I've friends who hold 5 x 2's director Francois Ozon in very high regard, as if he can do no wrong. This, like some of his others are very realistic, frank, often confrontational and make uncomfortable viewing. He's not my favourite director.

I certainly think it helps if the viewer has had their share of life's relationship 'journeys', too. Not just to know what the dialogue's about but what makes some often rather unlikeable people 'tick' and to shrug off the extremely earthy talk as easily as the characters do.

One of my favourite directors, Ingmar Bergman, could run a 3 hour film about relationships, as in his 'Scenes From A Marriage' and it would still hold interest til the end. 5 x 2 is much more adult, certainly less sweet but is strangely compelling.

As I'm sure you know by now, this film runs in reverse, from divorce settlement right through to first meet. Don't let that worry you, it works perfectly fine and just unfolds almost as naturally as if it were the normal way round. This, my second viewing after many years, on Channel 4, is no easier to watch, however. The acting is first rate, no doubt but that intensity doesn't give one a break and one can become stifled by the film's honesty. However, first love generally being much sweeter than ugly divorce, it does get lighter toward the end, with a rather odd looking swimming into the sunset (as in Westerns) finale.

My head tells me to give it 8/10 but my heart says 6, so a compromise; 7. The French songs that Ozon uses for the soundtrack though, are wonderful and get a 10!

This is one of the most resonant films I have seen for a long time. Superb performances by both leads and a simple but very effective structure. To begin at the end and move backwards to look at moments, glimpses, fragments is such a simple device yet devastatingly effective as demonstrated with such expertise by Ozon here. I found certain moments deeply moving such as the physical assault on his wife. It seemed like a desperate attempt by the husband to try and claim power over his wife. But we know that the relationship is in the final throes of death. I loved the scene on the wedding night when she looks at her mother and father who we have previously seen rowing, just dancing alone at the reception. Somehow you know that their relationship will last and there is hope for them. The adultery the wife commits seemed to work although at first I thought it too contrived. Her pleasure on seeing her husband and love for him as he sleeps when she creeps back into the room felt very real. For me however the most beautiful and most moving sequence was the end when they first meet. It was wonderfully set up and echoed real life so well. It is always a series of events, a chain that causes all the pieces to fall in the right place and the couple to meet. It such a subtle scene when they talk on the beach as we know they are about to fall in love. When they walk into the golden sea bathed in light the two are literally becoming one as they embark on a new chapter in both their lives. The beauty of the scene is made more powerful by the conflicting emotion in our minds as we know that this love will be destroyed. How can something so perfect ever diminish? What Ozon is saying is that all things must die, that surely it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Go and see this film. It is marvellous.

Going into the cinema, I had high expectations for 5x2. The reviews were glowing, the plot and structure sounded intriguing, and I have a genuine love of French cinema.

I came out hugely disappointed.

(Mistakenly?) I had hoped to see a film which showed some feeling and insight into the tragic decline and ultimate disintegration of a marriage and relationship between two people. And yes, while it's true that we do witness various stages of a marriage falling apart, what we don't ever see is any kind of meaningful relationship or feelings between any of the characters in the film. They are all so self-centered and one dimensional that it's a mystery that any of them are actually in a relationship in the first place. And it's even harder to care what happens/happened to them.

There's a few attempts to give the film some edge - a couple of "she's being raped... oh, actually she's enjoying it" scenes that give misogyny a bad name and a supposedly shocking tale of a mixed hetero/homo orgy complete with (gasp!) poppers and cocaine - but ultimately the whole experience is a grey, limp and lifeless one.

The introduction of an analogy to seemingly still waters hiding dangerous currents beneath is truly groan worthy, and a special mention has to go the American character that appears midway through the film - his presence is memorable despite its brevity by being one the most toe curlingly wooden performances I have ever seen.

In the end 5x2 left me depressed. Depressed at the thought that anyone could relate to the so-called marriage that is central to this film and its cold, insular world.

As another reviewer before me, I also can't believe how badly people are writing about this film here. I adore Francois Ozon and I've seen all his feature-length films. This one seems quite different from the others (except, maybe, Sous le sable) and it's as low-key as Ozon could ever get, but it is still an excellently scripted and played film that makes one think.

I didn't consider the backwards structure to be gimmicky at all, it rather helped the viewer to better make out flaws early in the relationship. There is betrayal in each one of the episodes, starting with the last (chronologically the first) one. The film shows us that even little egoisms and uncharitable behavior can lead to grave consequences - in this case, to divorce. The woman, Marion, seems to be easily led anywhere, not having enough standing of her own, while the man, Gilles, seems to be egoistic, cowardly and sometimes just simply sex-crazed.

I think the structure rather helps us to understand the characters better, since we have already seen the consequences of their actions and attitudes. I didn't consider the large gaps between (and also in) the episodes to be a problem - they only acknowledge that the whole story can never be told because it is made up by every single moment between their first meeting and the last time they see each other. These episodes can only indicate what went wrong, they cannot explain - that would be too simplistic.

The actors were excellent, especially Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi. The way the looks of the main characters changed during the film (becoming more and more youthful and fresh as the story goes backwards), was also excellently done.

The parallel love stories (between Gilles's brother and his young lover, and between Marion's parents) shed some more light on the relationship between Marion and Gilles - also on what might have gone wrong.

This film should probably be required viewing for every couple wanting to get married... :-) Not in order to deter them, but rather to make them aware of the pitfalls of relationships and married life.

I'm a big fan of French director François Ozon, and every film he releases automatically becomes a must see for me. 5x2 is the story of a relationship told backwards in five stages, from the divorce proceedings to the initial meeting between a couple. Given the way that this story plays out, it's clear that 5x2 isn't exactly a romantic film; as we always know that the relationship is leading into oblivion. The main talking point of this movie is the fact that the story plays out backwards. This type of plot has been used with great success in films like Memento, but despite being seen before; Ozon makes good use of his plotting, and it provides a refreshing take on the common romantic film. There isn't really a plot to speak of, and the focus is kept on the central relationship between the husband and wife. This ensures that Ozon is allowed to develop his characters without being bogged down by plot details, and it ultimately benefits the film as it's potency all rests with the characters of Marion and Giles, both of which are played to perfection by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Stéphane Freiss.

A film like this asks a lot of the performers, and as he's done several times before; Ozon ensures that both are up to the task, and he manages to pull great performances out of both the lead stars. The pair goes through a range of emotions, from happiness to hope and down to despair as the relationship falls apart. These days, it's more common for couples to split up; and this ensures that 5x2 is almost like Casablanca for the modern age. It's a very cynical film, but Ozon is not wrong in his depiction of a doomed relationship. The film is made more complicated by the inclusion of a child between the couple, but as each of the five sections of the film is relatively short in length, not everything is able to be explored and this is the film's main flaw. 5x2 is very French in its style and execution, and it's obvious that the director loves his home country. François Ozon is obviously gay (looking at the rest of his filmography), and even though this film is about a heterosexual relationship, the way that a gay couple is incorporated into the proceedings is very ham-fisted, and doesn't really fit. Still, this is a good film about the destruction of a relationship and overall, a success for the talented director.

Ozon's films are always a favourite of the art-house crowd, who often seem to see them as some kind of clever intellectual truth (and the more sex, particularly rough sex, in them the more intellectual they are deemed).

I thought at first that this was going to have something interesting to say on the disintegration of a marriage but instead the characters were unengaging, dull, self-indulgent and pretentious (the worst kind of middle-class subjects often beloved of French films) and as a result any observations about marriage were lost in the tedium of having to watch these people. The film begins in a striking way, which raised my hopes about what might follow, but I wanted some kind of insight into these characters and why they do what they do, but this film just didn't provide it. As with Swimming Pool, I think this is a case of King's new clothes, people finding something deep and meaningful in it when there is actually very little there at all.

A good idea wasted (as was my afternoon).

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.

My favourite movie of all time is Swimming Pool, Francois Ozon's pure genius.

I also loved Young & Beautiful starring Marine Vacth a fantastic actress who performs stunning sex scenes with such emotion. She also starred in L'Amant Double which was dreadful.

5x2 is not quite as great as Young & Beautiful, it's good not great, no climatic outcome, the way it's told in small scenes going backwards leaving gaps but it's a very watchable movie. It was all about Hannah for me, played by Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi who gives a brilliant performance.

It's Hannah's emotional content all portrayed by her face; abuse, infidelity, drunkenness and that dance at the end to name but a few.

One of those movies that you can watch over and over absorbing Ozon's emotional direction.

A film that suggests a cross between Bergmans's gut-wrenching "Scenes From a Marriage" (1973) and Stanley Donen's more lighthearted "Two For the Road" (1967), mixed in a bit with that backwards "Seinfeld" episode, "5X2" (2005) is a very fine adult drama from director Francois Ozon. As the title suggests, it is comprised of five short glimpses at the doomed relationship of a handsome professional couple, Marion (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) and Gilles (Stephane Freiss). As in "Two For the Road," we see unchronological snapshots of this couple's failing marriage, but unlike the '67 film, rather than being given scattershot scenes from various periods, here we proceed continuously backward in time: from the divorce settlement and its rather icky aftermath, backward to one of the couple's dinner parties, back still to the birth of their premature son, on to their wedding party (and a most unusual wedding night, to put it mildly), and all the way back to one of their first meetings. Our foreknowledge that the couple's marriage is doomed makes the cracks in Marion and Gilles' relationship stand out all the clearer. Consequently, the pretty, upbeat ending is rendered bittersweet at best, with our preglimpse of what their future holds. "5X2" has been finely put together and features sterling acting down to the smallest bit players. It was especially great for me seeing that grand old actor, Michael Lonsdale (who will always be Hugo Drax for us Bond fanatics), still acting at age 74, here playing Marion's father. My only complaint, really, concerning "5X2" is that it is a bit on the short and sketchy side; perhaps a few extra scenes would have enabled us to more fully understand the characters' motivations, particularly Gilles' (and especially his no-show at his son's birth). This, for me, is the only thing that prevents "5X2" from being a perfect 10.

At 5x2 we see the course of a relationship from end to beginning. The reverse chronology of events is now a well established editing technique which almost always works and intrigues the viewer.

The personalities of both Marion and Gilles are established fairly quickly, but the reasoning behind their actions is usually explained at a later time. In fact, this shows how well written 5x2 is, because throughout all five episodes the characters of the protagonists don't change, their behavior has changed due to actions of the other part.

Both actors deliver high caliber performances and their faces write perfectly on the screen. They do create a chemistry when needed (and a lack of again when needed). Can you believe by the way that beautiful Valeria Bruni is forty years old?

The vintage Italian music adds color to the story and Ozon shows he is an accomplished director. As the movie ends he gives us one of the most idyllic scenes ever filmed.

This is an interesting film about relationships, falling in love, coming together and going apart.

It is a brilliant story about Marion and Gilles, she is shy and undetermined. Gilles is selfish but seems not to be prepared to assume its responsibilities in their couple.

Ozon shows in reverse order, a relationship between those two people that used to be in love but that are growing apart. This is naked truth of what a relationship is all about. It can end like with Marion and Gilles at the beginning of the film or never end like in the case of the parents of the Marion...

So-so drama about a relationship that goes bad(kind of). The movie starts with the divorce papers being signed and then goes backwards all the way to their first encounter together. This awkward style is actually pulled off pretty well by director and writer Francois Ozon but what's wrong with the movie is that you don't really understand why things started in the first place and why it ended the way it did. There are hints, but nothing is really spelled out. It's more a chronicle of what happened with very little detail on the why's. This might work if the viewer cared about the characters but Ozon does very little in the area of background with the people involved in the story. With no depth in the characters, it is a very flat experience for the viewer. I'm usually impressed with European films because of their focus on the characters but this one didn't do anything for me despite Ozon's critically-acclaimed background.