| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 1, 2006

Even while we're flipping through the snapshots of two people's ultimate disenchantment with each other, it never feels tawdry or excessive or, for that matter, very interesting.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 18, 2005

A cool, sometimes chilly dissection of one couple's relationship.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Aug 18, 2005

Gilles and Marion may be more than the sum of their regrets, but because their creator hasn't done the math, they remain touching stick figures.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 29, 2005

Stripping away the extraneous details that etch great screen characters in our minds forever, Mr. Ozon pinpoints key moments in the life of a pair of married Parisians that leave the viewer paralyzed with boredom and confusion.

Full Review | Jul 28, 2005

Ozon, as he's shown in his many recent films (particularly Under the Sand), knows a thing or two about love and loss; 5x2 achingly demonstrates both.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 22, 2005

Unwinds with absolute clarity and sure style, and Freiss and Bruni-Tedeschi make an interesting couple, if not a truly memorable one.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 7, 2005

Neither Marion, with her melancholy stares, nor Gilles, with his detachment and his cigarettes, appears more than a character sketch.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 7, 2005

It's fascinating, like watching the collapse of a building in reverse.

| Jul 1, 2005

The film is Bergman's Scenes From a Marriage without the boring parts -- wait, I'm not supposed to say that.

| Jul 1, 2005

The inevitability of the conceit could wear on us, were it not for the lived-in performances of the cast, most important Bruni-Tedeschi and Freiss.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 24, 2005

You can get an idea of the two seemingly contradictory truths about this movie: It's not much fun, and it's impossible to stop watching.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 24, 2005

We never get to know the twosome, and the intense curiosity generated by the opening scene starts to wane severely.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 24, 2005

[Seems] less like scenes from a marriage than highlights from a gay man's fevered nightmare of what it would be like to be a straight married couple.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 17, 2005

Absent a meaty rationale, reading the story of a marriage backward smacks of derivative gimmickry.

| Jun 16, 2005

Ozon is a smart filmmaker, but he doesn't go nearly as deep as Bergman did.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 10, 2005

Franois Ozon uses reverse chronology to tell the story of a failed marriage. The device is not exactly a novelty, but it does make some dramatic sense in this case.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 10, 2005

a mature portrait of a relationship's thorny complexity

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 9, 2005

Bruno-Tedeschi has one of those alert, off-kilter screen faces that burn with light and intelligence even as their characters slide into darkness: a tragedienne of the first order.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 9, 2005

Ozon stages each scene so assuredly, with such a fluid sense of motive and desire, that I assumed we'd witness how even the best of intentions, from each party, could strand a marriage on the rocks. But no.

| Original Score: B- | Jun 8, 2005