5x2 (2004)

I see that AOL have downloaded a new header which has set the counter back to zero and which now tells me that only three visits have been paid to this site in the last ten and a half months.  Pretty good going AOL.  Or maybe I should be less neurotic about how many people visit and how few comment, since I really keep this blog for my own amusement!

Back to the business at hand, my reaction to this French film from Francois Ozon, one of the current star directors of French cinema and something of a miserablist if one treats "Eight Women" as an anomaly in his work -- since I find that all of his other films have a mean streak lurking underneath.  This particular movie is from the "Memento" and "Irreversible" school and starts with the end of the story; what we have are five scenes from a relationship, starting with the couple's divorce and working back through the everydayness of marriage, the birth of their child, their wedding and their initial attraction.  While each of these episodes is nicely realised, one is really none the wiser as to why they have divorced (or for that matter why the wife has agreed to a post-divorce final shag).  And the strong impression that I took away is that the husband was a right bastard throughout the relationship -- even in the final tender shot of their wading out in the surf at the Italian resort where they found each other, one is aware that he had arrived there with his girlfriend of five years.  Yes, life doesn't always or even usually produce happy endings, but do we need our noses rubbed in it?