Future daze

François Ozon, 5x2

A film in reverse episodes. A hint of Nordic (divorce) drama. A growingly unlikable man (reminiscent of an Erland Josephson performance); a man who has serious problems making love to and loving women. A strange space of filmic passivity. A rather bleak Greek opening and a growing-bleaker ending. An interesting ensemble of contrasts. A focus on Tedeschi as Marion when the real narrative problem is Gilles the John. A lack of emotional slash relational centre, possibly due to the otherwise fine episodic structure limiting a causal continuity. A still unpredictable film — that is, sufficiently engaging. A leap ahead of 8 Femmes, at least, yet only a mild departure from the Rampling films. And also, in my case, a badly projected film: I had to rush out during the forceful opening episode to alert the management of UGC Dublin that the projecting scale was wrong and constrained by the narrow ratio used for ads; they said they’d alert the projectionist but nothing came of it — which I’m not going to let them get away with again, the slackers.