DVD Watch as the five stages in the romance between a woman and a man, from the initial meeting to the final throes of their marriage at the divorce court, are dissected by the camera.
Details
The story begins at the chronological end as Marion and husband Gilles finalise their divorce proceedings in a sterile municipal office. All the usual depressing things occur, such as agreements on access rights to their child and the splitting of property and assets. And so with two signatures on a set of papers their marriage has ended and they are single once again. But how did it come to such a terrible end? All will be explained as we trace their journey down a road to their ultimately not-so blissful union. Shown as four revealing flashbacks, and in reverse order, their journey commences with the first tentative signs of a break-up before working backwards to their initial meeting on a sun-drenched beach in Italy.
The first of the remaining four scenes takes place one evening at a dinner party hosted by Gilles and Marion. They've invited Gilles' brother Christophe along with his new boyfriend Matthieu. Their after dinner conversation soon turns to the topic of sex and Gilles starts to describe an orgy that both he and Marion found themselves attending. Whilst Marion sat out the proceedings, deciding not to get involved and instead watch from a discreet distance, Gilles opted to join in with the fun and experimentation, highlighting his possible tendency towards infidelity and the growing cracks in their relationship.
The next scene shows Marion's pregnancy and the troubled birth of their son Nicolas. When a scan reveals that the placenta is obstructing Marion's birth canal and preventing the baby from growing properly, the doctors decide to induce the birth. It's all fairly routine and nothing too much to worry about, but when Marion rings Gilles to tell him of his impending fatherhood, rather than rushing to the clinic he carries on with his day as normal, even stopping for lunch and taking over three hours to reach Marion's side. Is he terrified of the birth, unsure about becoming a father, or simply reluctant to face the responsibility?
Rewind a little further and we arrive at Marion and Gilles' wedding day - the evening reception and a much happier time. But even then there are signs of trouble ahead. Exhausted and drunk after the celebrations, Gilles collapses into bed and fails to perform the traditional wedding night duties. Marion heads out for a walk only to encounter an American tourist and a late-night encounter that she won't be forgetting in a hurry. Nevertheless, come daybreak she returns to the bridal suite and confesses her love to her still slumbering husband.
The final scene is that of their first meeting on a sun-drenched beach in Italy. Although Gilles is already holidaying there with his current girlfriend there is a definite spark between Gilles and Marion. When his rather jealous girlfriend goes off trekking in the hills surrounding the hotel the two of them find themselves alone on a secluded beach, swimming together in the sea. As the sun sets on a beautiful day it all appears to be the beginning of a long and happy relationship.
Picture & Sound
The picture is bright and colourful with plenty of detail and a reasonable amount of colour depth. The above average bit-rate provides a fairly clean image with only a few signs of outlining. However, during some of the brighter and night-time scenes there is a slight problem with grain and a lack of depth to the blacks. The problem is made all the more noticeable when watching on a large screen television where things can begin to look rather messy indeed. Still, I suspect that the relatively small budget may have been a defining factor here. On the plus side, the print appears clean with no signs of dust scratches or whiskers. The subtitles are also rather annoyingly burnt onto the image so even if you can speak French you're stuck with them. Quite why these couldn't have been supplied as an optional subtitle track is beyond me. After all, that's exactly what the facility on the DVD is for!
Given that this is a French film with dialogue entirely in French, unless you speak the language the sound, and especially the dialogue, is not going to be quite as important to the proceedings. Nevertheless, the dialogue on this 448 Kbps Dolby Digital soundtrack is clear and well presented in the centre channel whilst the musical score is equally effective across the front soundstage. On the down side there is very little use of the surround channels, with rather oddly only the Wigfield "Saturday Night" floor-filler finding its way to the rears during a disco scene. Still, it's hardly the sort of film that demands a thunderous surround soundtrack.
Menu & Extras
The menu is scored and simply animated with cut scenes from the film whilst the subsequent menus are static but scored with the same music. Some of the extras are surprisingly interesting, with a Making Of featurette which goes well and truly behind the scenes at the wedding party, plus a good selection of deleted scenes. Unfortunately the rest of the extras feel a little like padding.
The main extra is the sixteen minute Making of Featurette. Concentrating on the wedding party scene, and again with burnt-on subtitles, director François Ozon is seen frantically setting up the scene, grumbling at extras staring into the camera and attempting to get the best performances from his actors. Detail-wise it's hardly the most informative featurette, offering little insight into the wider production of the film, but from a "fly on the wall" perspective it is actually very interesting to watch the filming process and it almost feels as though you're standing on set with the production team.
Next up are seventeen minutes worth of Deleted Scenes. Split into five chapters, the scenes play in the same reverse order as the film itself, starting with the divorce proceedings and working back to their first meeting in Paris. As the film is not overly long, or particularly fast paced for that matter, I'm not entirely sure why they were removed from the final cut. Still, it's nice to see them included here.
Next up are four minutes worth of stills from the film set to music. Although you can pause the feature, I'd much rather see these sorts of extras presented as individual images which can be moved forwards and backwards at will. They also have a rather bizarre frosted artistic effect which doesn't help matters. Finally, rounding things off we have the Theatrical Trailer for the film along with trailers for several other Pathé titles including Bombon El Perro, The Edukators, Swimming Pool, Look at Me and Intimate Strangers. Although some of the extras disappoint, the Making Of and the Deleted Scenes do add some extra value to what is already a rather interesting film.
Overall
To be honest, I'm not the biggest Francophile around, but when it comes to filmmaking I'll quite happily acknowledge that the French can come up with some outstanding films. Nikita, Betty Blue and Rififi are just a few classic examples. 5x2 can now be safely added to that list of remarkable films that Hollywood so desperately needs to find a way to reproduce. Ok, so the film's reverse narrative style is no longer that unique, but in this case it works wonderfully well.
The only real disappointment is the state of the disc itself. The French version is equipped with a DTS soundtrack, the picture quality here is not quite the best around and those burnt-on subtitles are a little too large and intrusive. But I suppose with such a limited audience it would be difficult to justify spending too much on a title such as this.
Still, as a critically acclaimed title, with nominations at The European Film Awards and The Venice Film Festival, where actress Bruni-Tedeschi received the Pasinetti Award for Best Actress, it's just a pity that Pathé appear to treat foreign-language titles with such indifference. After all, if Artsmagic can produce outstanding results with their Eastern cinema titles, why can't anyone else?
It's not very often I give a full set of thumbs to a foreign language film - especially a French one at that - but credit where credit is due. 5x2 is an absolute cracker of a film and even with its presentation issues it is still well worth checking out. Highly recommended.
Special features
- Making of Featurette
- Deleted Scenes
- Photo Gallery
- Theatrical Trailer
- Theatrical Trailers for Bombon El Perro, The Edukators, Swimming Pool, Look at Me and Intimate Strangers
