We have investigated the dynamics of optical beams in a cubic (focusing)-quintic (defocusing) nonlinear medium. In particular, we have found that strong beams can show long-lived elliptical oscillations, whereas in other cases, i.e., for weak beams or cylindrical oscillations, the dynamics decay quickly. This finding explains the observed higher efficiency in the fusion of two strong beams. We have also investigated, numerically and analytically, the robustness of the beams to an initial phase chirp.