Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Monday, May 12, 2008

5 x 2 (2004)

Francois Ozon had an art-house hit with his intriguing & naughty SWIMMING POOL, but he returned to his more intimate French language roots for this reverse-chronology tale that splices SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE/'73 with TWO FOR THE ROAD/'67. Valerie Bruni-Tedeschi & Stephane Freiss are first seen signing their divorce decree & then at a hotel for an unsatisfactory/forced pas de deux. Four more scenes detail the fault lines that destroyed the marriage as we hopscotch all the way back to their initial encounter, as creatures of the sea, no less. Oy. Ozon has developed a smooth technique (or is it the technique of a smoothie?), and there's a good bit of ripe & erotic sex on display (only the wedding scene totally flames out), but we’re asked to be suffused with melancholy at what went wrong without the leads ever acquiring enough depth to hold the charge of emotion Ozon begs us for.

No comments: