The Woman in the Fifth

The Woman in the Fifth (2011)

Well, the reason this movie gets some pretty awful reviews is the utter confusion of the plot. And yet it's a deliberate confusion--which is no excuse. It just means this isn't quite bad filmmaking, but a bad decision or two taken too far.

You see, the main character, played with ease and almost familiarity by Ethan Hawke, is mentally unstable. He seems to have two distinct realities, and these are easily confused by the viewer. And in one of these realities he does terrible things, though it isn't clear because we see those terrible things as innocently as he does (which is to say, not at all, it seems).

The character, Tom Ricks, is an American in Paris, a writer ostensibly in town to find and visit his daughter. But the mother's reaction to his showing up at their house is the first clue that something is wrong. This seemingly smart and very nice fellow scares her to call to the police. We see Ricks run to save himself from arrest but we don't quite know if he's to blame or if the mother is just overreacting.

The fact is the confusions in the movie are overwhelming. Maybe there was a better logic somewhere that an editor, under pressure from a producer or distributor, made much out of. Or maybe it was an artful decision to leave us bewildered, to spend time and emotional energy gathering the pieces and clues. The director, Pawel Pawlikowski, has something of a success or two behind him and so might have pretensions that got the better of things here.

In a way, the movie is better than it's overall impression by the end. There are numerous scenes that show a modern Paris very far removed--and much more revealing--than the glorified city seen in both mainstream French movies and American love letters like Woody Allen's recent time-travel. And the acting is overall restrained and convincing. In its bones, this is a substantial movie. Most of all, the cinematography is superb, some of the best creative stuff I've seen recently, dependent not on creative editing but on smart visual seeing--framing, kinetics, focus, and so on. I think you could watch it on many levels with great pleasure if you knew ahead of time the overall meaning and plot were going to be a mess.

Without forewarning, I'm guessing it leaves mostly frustration and bitterness.

Douglas Kennedy's perplexing novel THE WOMAN IN THE FIFTH has been further contorted by writer/director Pawel Pawlikowski for the film of the same name (aka La femme du Vème). If the viewer has read the novel then the confusion of the story will not be as surprising as it is to the novice viewer. In many ways this is a brilliant cinematic exploration of the fragility of the human mind, how events of the past can influence the manner in which we attempt to reconstruct a viable present. But in other ways this is a film that refuses to tell a story that is logical and will leave many viewers with some serious head scratching by movie's end.

Academic professor of literature and writer Tom Hicks (Ethan Hawke) seems to be fleeing America in the wake of a scandal simply because he wants to see his six-year-old daughter Chloé (Julie Papillon): Tom's estranged wife Nathalie (Delphine Chuillot) refuses to let Tom see his daughter, has a restraining order in place and seems fearful of Tom's character (it is suggested that Tom may have been in prison for the past six years). The police are called and Tom escapes onto a bus, falls asleep and s awakened at the end of the line having been robbed of this luggage and money. He is in the sleazy part of Paris inhabited by North Africans and Moroccans and finds a degree of solace in a tiny café, the beautiful Polish waitress Ania (Joanna Kulig) offers him coffee and introduces him to the owner, Sezer (Samir Guesmi) who allows him to room in the filthy place, an offer that is accompanied by a 'job' where he will be a night watchman in a warehouse visited by shadowy figures who must give a code for Tom to allow entry. Tom uses his night jobsite to write lengthy letters to Chloé and spends his days spying on her at her school. At a bookstore he meets a fellow American who invites him to an evening reception for writers and there he encounters the very strange Margit (Kristin Scott Thomas), a bewitching but enigmatic widow of a Hungarian writer who is obviously attracted to Tom and sets meeting times and places for them to engage in a tryst (in the Fifth Arrondissement). Tom and Margit begin a tempestuous physical affair but at the same time Tom and Ania have an equally passionate affair and there is always in the background Tom's obsession to reunite with his daughter. But the story implodes with a murder, a disappearance, and a very strange change in the veracity of Margit's existence. It is at this point that the film becomes purposefully deranged and bizarre and the audience is left with merely some ideas and clues as to what has really happened. How are these incongruous events to make sense? Can they make sense? Is Tom succumbing to the same fever that kept him sheltered for many days upon his arrival in beautiful Paris? Has time somehow passed him by or is he living in an even grander deceit than he first thought?

The film is basically in French with English subtitles. Ethan Hawke struggle with the French but that is credible for a 'just arrived' American. Kristin Scott Thomas offers her usual excellent skills as the strange Margit and the remainder of the cast do well with what little dialogue they are given. The dank atmospheric cinematography is by Ryszard Lenczewski and the correctly strange musical score (from an aria form a Handel opera sung by a countertenor to piano music excerpts form the Romantic era) is the work of Max de Wardener. Pawel Pawlikowski's moody, menacing, downbeat film takes something from the director's Polish compatriots Polanski and Kieslowski. It is offbeat but for those who appreciate experimental cinema this is well worth your time.

Grady Harp

"The Woman in the Fifth" throws us into the middle of the story. Seemingly a perfect way to start, a back-story is implied begging to be told, and future events destined to unfold to eventually come together in an interesting climax and dénouement. But the back-story never was revealed and the plot elements are indiscernible to the average eye.

Tom (Ethan Hawke) is an American writer moving to Paris. His first novel was a moderate success and he is most likely suffering from various creative blocks, probably not helped by the fact that his ex-wife has a restraining order against him, prohibiting him from seeing his daughter.

At this point, we are driven into a world of crime – not surprising for a thriller, but we don't know what crimes yet. Broke and alone, Tom makes a deal with a shady "businessman", develops an affair with a mysterious worldly woman (Kristin Scott Thomas) and then develops an affair with a sweetly mysterious waitress (Joanna Kulig).

For the few crimes that we do know were committed, it's awfully hard to understand why or by whom. The reality of the film and the imagination (or fantasy) element of the film are most likely impossible to separate. Almost all viewers have come up with different explanations, if they came up with any.

It can be interesting watching a jarring film and deduce whatever explanation you like. It can also be disappointing if you don't come up with any explanation that you like. I'm afraid I fall into the latter group.

That being said, it's nice seeing Ethan Hawke in a lead role in an indie. And speaking French no less (not perfectly, but it fits the role)! The imagery and cinematography chosen for this film were interesting and walked the thin line between thriller and horror, helped along with a slightly off-beat score. "The Woman in the Fifth" is off- beat, if it's anything at all.

Watch this with a group and have a great discussion on questions like: What happened in that movie? What was that about? How much of the content was symbolic and how much of it was actually concrete?

Or watch it alone and become miserably confused.

Despite the promise of a collaboration between Pawel Pawlikowski, Ethan Hawke, Joanna Kulig, and Kristin Scott Thomas set in Paris, this film fizzles into a frustrating, rather dreary mess. In a nutshell, an American writer (Hawke) shows up at his ex-wife's apartment, hoping to see their daughter. She calls the police on him and he flees, and after being robbed on a train, he ends up in a seedy hotel. He takes a shady job to pay for his room, and gets involved with a couple of women, one of whom was the muse for a Hungarian author (Scott Thomas), and another who works at the hotel (Kulig). Things go south when a man trying to blackmail him turns up dead, and the muse (who is also his alibi for the evening in question) turns out to be imaginary.

The meaning to the film is probably along the lines of an artist struggling with his own sanity, and having to make difficult choices between creative output and family, all while living in impoverished conditions. He tries to write beautiful, touching work but he's doing so in the dingiest of places, the struggle of which has been felt by a large number of artists since time began. While Kulig and Scott Thomas felt rather wasted in their parts, Hawke shows his range here and has several fine moments, which were the highlights of the film.

Where it falls down is in the narrative, which is too vague and open-ended. I disliked the muse reveal, and thought the murder was an odd bit of drama, things that sent the story over the rails for me. I wondered about what had led to the restraining order which was alluded to early on, and wished that the film had focused more on the dynamic with his ex-wife and child, as opposed to the other women in Paris. How much of this is in the imagination of the author is subject to interpretation and that's kind of interesting, but ultimately it just doesn't come together.