The Woman in the Fifth

I EXIST AS MUCH AS YOU EXIST
Tom Ricks (Ethan Hawke) is an American novelist who goes to Paris in hopes of patching up his relationship with his ex-wife (Delphine Chuillot) and daughter (Julie Papillon). She wants nothing to do with him because of some event in their past, which is not fully explained. Through a series of bad luck he ends up working for a man named Sezer (Samir Guesmi) as a night time doorman, a job steeped with symbolism as he works on his second novel.

Meanwhile, Tom meets a mysterious older woman (Kristin Scott Thomas) who has taken a shine to him. She is the "Woman in the Fifth." He begins an affair with her about the same time he takes up with Sezer's girlfriend, his "Polish muse" (Joanna Kulig). We don't know how weird things really are until near the end of the tale.

If I told you I understood everything in this film, I would be lying. There is symbolism in his forest writing, the bugs, and the light which dims and goes bright, none of which I fully understood. Then...

A Labyrinth of Questions of Fantasy and Reality
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...

A dark side of the City of Light
There is a lot to like about this film. The mood--the style! Much of the film is set in a dreadfully depressing part of Paris that is almost painful to see. And yet there are moments that are almost lovely. There is a scene near the end in the Arab's cafe, with an old man sitting alone at a table, all in shades of deep blues and grays that reminded me of some of Picasso's painting in his blue period. Then the camera moves back to include the kitchen area where the pretty blond Polish girl is working, a square of light in the darkness that reminded me of Edward Hopper. There are some other strangely lovely scenes too --the writer and the Polish girl, lit up by the midday sun in the grass, making love. Then the camera again pulls back and we see that they are not in a sweet country meadow, but only a few feet from a train track in an ugly slum.

There's another great scene, too, of a rooftop apartment right near the base of the Eiffel Tower. I've seen the Eiffel Tower...

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