Review: 5 to 7

Wannabe writer Anton Yelchin uses a smoke break to chat up older French hottie Berenice Marlohe (he’s 24, she’s 33), and before long they’re embarking on an affair, but with only a limited amount of time afforded to them. You see, she’s married (with kids) to the sophisticated wealthy diplomat Lambert Wilson, but both engage in affairs with the other’s full knowledge. It works for them. Yelchin wants to be with Marlohe, so it’s gonna have to work for him too. So between the hours of 5PM and 7PM, Yelchin and Marlohe spend time together. Olivia Thirlby plays Wilson’s mistress, whilst Frank Langella and Glenn Close play Yelchin’s Jewish parents who try their best to understand what the fuck their son has gotten himself into.

Anton Yelchin was a really promising talent. He should not have died so young, he should not have become a member of Club 27. It’s also a bit of a shame that one of his last films (though he made a lot of films in a short frame of time) was this rather off-putting romance from debut feature film writer-director Victor Levin (a producer of TV shows like “Mad About You” and “Mad Men”). Released in most places in 2015, it has pretentious trappings and an obvious trajectory, resulting in not a whole lot of fun. I wanted to love this film as I loved the earlier “Like Crazy”, but those characters and those situations convinced me and drew me in. This feels…remote. Chilly. It’s really only Frank Langella who comes across as an actual human being and livens the film up a bit.

I knew I was in trouble very early on. The music is so romantic…and then the lead actors start smoking. Yeah, that kills the mood and the romance for me I’m afraid. There’s a little Woody Allen circa “Manhattan” about it, but much, much lesser quality. I didn’t believe in the central couple, and the age difference was only one factor. Yelchin and Berenice Marlohe (who I would probably like just fine in any other film) just don’t have any chemistry at all, and I couldn’t for the life of me see what Marlohe’s character would see in Yelchin, neither physically nor anything in his character. For me though, the killer was that the two lead characters were so off-putting and pretentious. Ooooh, look at us we’re smoking, aren’t we sophisticated? Nope. In fact, getting back to the chemistry, Yelchin actually has much more chemistry with the lovely Olivia Thirlby, to the point where I wish they could’ve scrapped the film and started over with a film about those two. That’d be a film worth seeing. Otherwise, Frank Langella, Glenn Close, and Lambert Wilson are all perfectly cast, and the final moments do have a certain something to them that I wish the rest lived up to. It’ll probably be someone’s idea of romance, just not me. I have no particular moral superiority when it comes to infidelity in and of itself, but I don’t think it’s especially ‘romantic’. More to the point with this film, I also can’t stand this snooty ‘European’ attitude about it where the characters act like they’re so sophisticated because they’re open about their affairs. It’s silly and pretentious as hell.

No, this one did nothing for me, though Olivia Thirlby sure has ‘something’. I wish she was more of a frequent presence on screen. She’s lovely and should already be a star. As for the late Anton Yelchin, he had such untapped potential and I’m still incensed at the senseless nature of his death at such a young age. It’s so wrong. The film is mediocre, and not worthy of its cast though many seem to disagree with me.

Rating: C