5x2: Five Times Two

After the undwhelming debacle of Swimming Pool, I decided to give French director, Francois Ozon another chance with this marital drama. The gimmick of the film is that it tells of the marriage Marion and Gilles from end to beginning. It takes five significant events in their relationship -- first love, the wedding night, birth of their child, a dinner party, and divorce -- and begins the film with the divorce and ends the film with the moment they first fall in love. It's an intriguing premise filled with possibilities, yet as far as I can see, Ozon fails to utilize any of them. The idea alone, the development of their relationship, and the understated execution of it all is worthy of making this a good film, but its lack of insight into the characters or the idea of marriage, keep this from becoming a better film. Perhaps it is the fact that prior to their initial encounter, both Marion and Gilles were either recovering from or on the downard slopes of previous relationships, and the fact that they seem to need to be in relationships in their often selfish quests to make themselves "happy" that dooms them from the start, leaving the postcard perfect final image to be a bittersweet heralding of failure.