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5X2
(2004)
Dir: Francois Ozon
I watched this movie while deeply hungover. When I watch movies in such a desperate, dehydrated state, they burrow into my psyche in startling ways. Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, for example, made me cry when I watched it after a night of heavy drinking. The way that Lauryn Hill’s character, Rita, belts that shit out at the end of the movie, proving to her unbelieving mother the power of song, I just … well, yeah.
Watching 5X2, not only was I extra susceptible due to the physical and mental incapacitation brought on by the bottle, but my fiancé and I gotten into a fight the night before. I felt very low. It was a heated, drunken argument, and when I woke up she’d already left for work.
From what I could remember, our fight started a thoughtful discussion that escalated because I passed out in the middle of it. We’ve had our share of drunken quibbles in the past, and I was sure that everything would be alright, but there was still a painful, hollow feeling throwing loads of coal into the furnace of my hangover—a painful hollow feeling that prompted 5X2 to grab a shovel and pitch in. The film depicts the death of a husband and wife’s relationship as shown in five chapters that unfold in reverse chronology. As 5X2 opens, Giles and Marion (played by Stephane Freiss and Valeria Bruni Tedschi respectively) sit in a mediator’s office finalizing their divorce. Afterward they go to a hotel, presumably for a final roll in the hay. Giles ends up sodomizing his ex-wife against her will before they part ways. Heavy shit. The four chapters that follow serve to show just how things became so wicked and hopeless: a small dinner party and too much wine leads to a creepy revelation; Giles freaks out and bails while Marion gives birth to their son; on their wedding night Marion has questionable interactions with a weird American man after Giles has passed out; and finally the origins of their relationship are shown as they meet at an island retreat—Giles is there with his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend and Marion is vacationing alone. This technique works brilliantly. It husks their relationship until all that is left are the quivering seeds that grow into the doomed marriage that has been brutally presented and thoughtfully filleted.
The direction is superb, but what really makes the picture work is the acting. Both Freiss and Tedschi deftly flush out their characters by moving away from the embittered couple we first meet and toward the infinitely more naïve one that at the core of the film’s ultimate realization. The strange thing is that in the context of the narrative, Giles and Marion never really fight. By the end you realize that, in the end, they seem to have swallowed oceans of discontent rather than telling one another how they really feel, or what they really want out of life. Subsequently they have drowned their relationship in disdain.
5x2 did not make me cry. I found it deeply affecting, but what was weird was that even though it is full of anguish, it made me feel better. I pulled myself out of bed and actually felt happy that we had fought. I am very grateful that my love and I have the courtesy to clobber one another with honesty when things get tough.
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