It is in the following scene where the audience will begin to feel perplexed, as both Marion and Gilles enter a very Spartan hotel room.  Gilles asks whether he should close the blinds, but she says that it is not needed.  He removes his shirt and then his undershirt while apparently getting ready for bed in the middle of the day.  Marion returns to the room with a towel covering her body.  She crawls into the opposite side of the bed where he is waiting naked underneath the blanket.  It is bewildering to see these two in bed together right after they have signed the divorce papers.

She removes the towel and Gilles begin to gentel kiss and fondle her naked body.  Then Marion's cell phone rings and she answers.  She hangs up and they begin to make love when she suddenly says, "Stop."  However, he desires her and knows probably from previous sexual encounters with her, as his wife, that she sometimes approaches the situation in such a manner.  She continues to yell, "Stop! Stop! Stop!", and this time she really means it, but he pursues overpowering her with his full physical might.  The scene radiates awkwardness, but also the sentiments of the final sexual encounter.  The camera focuses in on her face.  Nothing is said, but the emotions say more than a thousand words.  The whole scene in the hotel room is a blur of different emotions racing by to the final sentiment where the audience maybe finds some understanding of why she got divorced from the sexual brute, Gilles.

The scene in the hotel room is the first out of five scenes between Marion and Gilles, as it backtracks into their past.  Through this backward journey the audience gets to discover the mistakes and errors that have hurt them both including themselves.  Maybe the audience can build an understanding of why it got to the point of the divorce, and what triggered them both to enter the hotel room in the beginning.  Some of this backward story telling brings to mind the grotesquely brilliant Irreversible (2002) where the audience gets to experience the ending in the beginning through a gruesome crime.  The difference between Irreversible and 5x2 is that François Ozon does not emphasize the big or traumatic incidents that lead up to the hotel scene, but on the small and subtle moments when silence, feelings and thoughts are exchanged and kept secret.

In some aspects, 5x2 is a truly wonderful and brilliant film, but the theme seems to have been reused in this film.  Some might feel similarities between Ozon's film and Bergman's epic Scenes from a Marriage (1973) and maybe even Irreversible in its backward narration.  Despite the similarities Ozon tells an authentic tale of a married couple's road to the final break up, which offers much for the audience to contemplate.  It should also be mentioned, that Ozon's films seldom return to the same theme.  Each and every time he succeeds in generating a new and interesting story, as he does with 5x2.  However, he does not reach the cinematic heights of Under the Sand (2000) with 5x2, but does bring the audience on an intriguing tale of a couple's psychodynamic development.

DIRECTED BY

COUNTRY

France

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