The Woman in the Fifth (2012)

'The Woman in the Fifth' starts out as a very generic thriller: a depressed Writer (and this really is a "Writer" with a capital "W", as Hollywood imagines them, intense, solitary and driven by their art) comes to Paris, where he is mysteriously chased by two beautiful strangers while having to deal with a variety of lowlifes (portayed in a way that feels quasi-racist). The eventual resolution to the mystery is more unusual, but depends on a blurring of truth and fiction which is not handled with particular skill. Director Pawel Pawlikowski is better known for the sublime, low key 'Last Resort' and 'My Summer of Love'; to be frank, he seems much less at home here in the mainstream.

An American novelist arrives in Paris, hoping to reunite with his French wife and young daughter after being released from an institution, but his pleas for reconciliation are bluntly rejected. Shortly after this setback, his money and belongings are stolen, and he rents a room at a fleabag hotel owned by a sinister Lebanese, and quarrels with a foul-mouthed African over the filth in their shared toilet. As his life spirals towards fragmentation, he obsessively stalks his daughter's school playground during the day, and survives by working as a night watchman in an underground labyrinth. Invited to a literary party, he begins an affair with the mysterious widow of a Hungarian author, while also becoming intimate with the barmaid girlfriend of the hotel proprietor.Countless camera shots through railings and windows provide sledgehammer clues that the novelist's Parisian odyssey is the fantasy of a deranged patient still confined in some stateside institution, and his surreal misadventures represent the man's delusions intermingled with memories. The real identities of the other characters are fairly obvious - the hotel owner is the asylum governor - the African a fellow patient - the barmaid a nurse who dispenses medications. The two mistresses are archetypes of good and evil - the author's widow is a vampiric, dark-haired sophisticate, and could be a personification of the inmate's dead mother - while the younger one is a nurturing blonde Polish country girl who probably represents an idealized version of his wife. Who knows . . . or cares? Those who admire this downbeat clone of Mulholland Drive can unravel the puzzle.

While Ethan Hawke is not one of my favorite actors, Kirstin Scott-Thomas is. This is not to say I don't like Hawke, though if this were the only film of his I'd seen, I wouldn't want to see another. This film is the only one of Scott-Thomas that I haven't liked. So, how could these two actors be in such a flop? I actually turned it off about two thirds of the way through, too bored to continue. I found myself wondering how much time was taken up in loooong camera shots. As the character played by Ethan Hawke screws his way back and forth between two women, not too much else happens. The characters I found to be pretentious (especially K. Scott-Thomas's character) and predictable. If you're considering watching The Woman in the Fifth, don't waste your time.

You do not often get the opportunity to see such a beautifully crafted film. This film is seamless in the way it shows you what it chooses to show you. Genius cinematography! If you compare this film to mainstream cinema, of course you are not going to be happy. This film is not mainstream and its not trying to be. The way I see it is that everything you see and hear reflects exactly what someone living with psychosis or another severe mental illness would experience. The film has many similarities to "Black Swan" in that way. The entire 90 minutes of the film you are taken on a psychotic journey. Nothing makes sense. There are glimpses of normalcy and then everything goes back to chaos with no real conclusion. The story's journey mimics what it must be like to be in the psyche of the mentally ill.The dark shots, the cloudy skies and colourless rooms are all reflections of Tom's twisted psyche. A metaphorical dark hell if you will. My guess is that Tom is actually locked up somewhere. The images on screen are really a portrayal of Tom's distorted thoughts during the past 90 minutes while he stares blankly at the white walls that surround him.