SIFF 2005: François Ozon's 5X2 - Or Not

I was really looking forward to seeing François Ozon's 5X2 on Saturday (having loved 8 Women and Swimming Pool), but it just didn't happen.

My friend and I arrived at The Egyptian around 8:15 to get in line for the 9:00 showing. We noticed that the rush ticket line was unusually long -- like, longer than I've ever seen a rush line. I believe when the theater employees came out to count, it was 60+.

We had gotten in the ticket holders line early enough to be just around the corner of the building, but the line quickly grew and ticket holders eventually stretched down the entire length and around the corner on the other side. At this point, we realized that it was 8:55, and they hadn't started seating yet. Around 9:15, an employee came out and told us that the film before had run over by 45 minutes so it would be a little bit before we could get in, as they had to clear the theater first.

Since we had underestimated how cold it was outside (neither of us had jackets on), we discussed selling our tickets to a few people in the rush line - trying to figure out how we could offer them to the cute girls we had our eye on in the middle of the line without offending anyone else. We also became the "hub" of the line; everyone would stop right where we were to ask if our line was the ticket holder's line. One guy who stopped exclaimed it was odd that the ticket holder's line was so long and the rush ticket line was so short*...after talking for a bit about that, he seemed to get nervous, glanced around and exclaimed, "Oh hi guys, I'm a ticket holder too!". Maybe he thought the crowd would turn ugly or something. I think he ended up ditching because he didn't want to go to the end of the (now gigantic) line.

As luck would have it, the venue manager for the theater came 'round shortly after that and offered people $10 a ticket, in order to shorten the line and make sure they didn't have to turn too many people away. We volunteered, she took our tickets, 10 minutes later the line started moving in, and we collected our cash and were on our way.

Note: The friendly Egyptian employee with the long hair (who I always see at SIFF, but still don't know his name) also informed everyone that 5X2 would be playing at The Varsity soon -- so everyone who missed it at SIFF can catch it there.

*yeah, I didn't get it either.

Image (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi and Stéphane Freiss) from Rotten Tomatoes.