`5X2' TAKES INSIGHTFUL MEASURE OF FAILED UNION.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

THE INNOVATIVE French filmmaker Francois Ozon (``Swimming Pool,'' ``8 Women,'' ``Under the Sand'') employs a trick that's been used before for his latest, ``5X2.''

Like the Harold Pinter play ``Betrayal,'' which was made into a riveting 1983 film starring Jeremy Irons, Ben Kingsley and Patricia Hodge, ``5X2'' charts the disintegration of a marriage in reverse, from its bitter end to its romantic beginning.

Ozon and frequent co-screenwriter Emmanuele Bernheim take a looser, less-dramatized approach to their scenes than Pinter, who built his play around a romantic triangle. While infidelity plays a part in the crumbling of Marion (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) and Gilles' (Stephane Freiss) union, it's equal among several other incompatible elements that appear to have doomed their relationship from the get-go.

By nature, the first sequence seen is the most disturbing. Ozon opens with the couple in a magistrate's office while a clerk reads off the terms of their divorce very matter-of-factly. He makes it sound like the most amicable of splits, but the fraught expressions on Gilles and Marion's faces tell a sadder story. Afterward, they retire to a cheap hotel room for a final sexual encounter that is anything but celebratory.

While nothing that follows is as harrowing, Bruni-Tedeschi poignantly unveils Marion's passionate disillusionment and Freiss brings a brooding ache to Gilles' unfocused but profound fear of commitment all the way back to the start.

Through an uncomfortable dinner party, the birth of their son that Gilles just can't bring himself to be part of, a rather strange wedding night and a beach encounter that ominously incorporates a setting sun, Marion and Gilles act in ways that rarely prove predictable but usually make a haunting kind of emotional sense.

Overall, though, the film feels elusive. The principals' sometimes minimal, occasionally humorous responses to their partner's provocations blunt the drama of certain situations. And while Ozon and company should be praised for not depending on a more simplified, plot-driven look at a troubled marriage, there's also a sense that more needs to be said or shown.

What is presented, however, bears all the canny behavioral insight that marked Ozon's films with Charlotte Rampling. ``5X2'' may not be his best movie, but it's more intriguing than many directors' finest work.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

5X2 - Three stars

(R: nudity, sex, language, drug use)

Starring: Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, Stephane Freiss.

Director: Francois Ozon.

Running time: 1 hr. 30 min.

Playing: Nuart, West L.A.

In a nutshell: The dissolution of a less-than-ideal marriage is studied in five acts, going backward in time. A lesser work from one of France's best young filmmakers, but quite strong in parts.

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In ``5X2,'' Stephane Freiss and Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi portray a couple whose troubled relationship is explored going backward in time.