REVIEWED - 5X2: ONLY Michael Winterbottom and Woody Allen can match François Ozon in terms of generating a prolific output in contemporary cinema, and the quality and range of Ozon's movies provides a strong argument that he is the most consistent of the three.

5X2 is Ozon's seventh full-length feature in as many years, and he is already in post-production on yet another film.

An apt alternative title for 5X2 would have been Scenes from a Marriage. 5X2 refers to how Ozon's movie is formed, as five extended sequences follow a couple - Marion (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi) and Gilles (Stéphane Freiss) - from the rosy beginning to the bitter ending of their relationship.

5X2 begins with the cold, clinical ending of Gilles and Marion's marriage in divorce. It then works backwards through happier times to when the couple first met, pausing along the way as we detect the exact point at which this relationship is clearly doomed.

There is nothing gimmicky about this structural device, which proves subtle and revealing as the movie offers melancholy reflections on this evaporation of love. With insight and maturity, it observes the full arc of the relationship from different perspectives as it disintegrates into tension and animosity.

When the film introduces Marion's bickering parents (the splendid Françoise Fabian and Michel Lonsdale), it suggests that divorce is the wiser option over a slowly deteriorating marriage that appears to be sustained only by mutual dependency and resentment.

Another point of view is expressed at a dinner party for Gilles's gay brother and younger boyfriend, one of whom remarks, "Sperm in a spoon is better than a heterosexual husband." And the film quietly observes the fate of the young son Marion and Gilles bring into the world, as they complete their legal custody arrangements for him.

While Ozon makes a point of showing both Marion and Gilles in all their qualities and flaws, his film, in common with much of his earlier work, is clearly more sympathetic to the woman's point of view. Following Under the Sand, 8 Femmes and Swimming Pool, 5X2 demonstrates once again Ozon's forte in working with women, and he elicits an exceptional performance from the expressive Bruni-Tedeschi.