Release Date (UK) – 17th February 2012
Certificate (UK) – 15
Running Time – 83 mins
Country – France, Poland, UK
Director – Pawel Pawlikowski
Starring – Ethan Hawke, Kristin Scott Thomas, Joanna Kulig, Samir Guesmi, Delphine Chuillot, Julie Papillon
Director Pawel Pawlikowski returns to film-making for the first time since 2004′s My Summer of Love, with an adaptation of Douglas Kennedy’s 2007 novel The Woman in the Fifth.
Ethan Hawke plays Tom Ricks, a troubled American writer and university lecturer who comes to Paris to attempt a reconciliation with his estranged French wife (Chuillot) and daughter (Papillon). When his wife calls the police due to an existing exclusion order, Tom runs away. After catching a bus and falling asleep, he wakes up at the final stop to find all his belongings have been stolen. Finding himself renting a room in a seedy hotel, he accepts a job offer from the hotel owner Sezer (Guesmi) which involves working six hours in a locked room as a night watchman. As he continues to keep an eye on his daughter, he gets involved with two separate women. The mysterious and seductive translator Margit (Thomas) who he meets at a literary function and Ania (Kulig) a Polish waitress who works in the hotel’s cafe-bar. As his relationship with both women gets more complicated, Tom starts to lose his grip on reality.
The return of Pawlikowski to the big screen is definitely something to celebrate. As director of two of the finest UK features of recent years (Last Resort and My Summer of Love), his 8 year absence has been regrettable. He had shot 60% of an adaptation of Magnus Mills’ The Restraint of Beasts in 2006 with Rhys Ifans and Ben Whishaw, but the project was abandoned after his wife fell ill and later passed away. 6 years later, Pawlikowski has returned with another book adaptation.
However, his return turns out to be a slight disappointment in comparison with his earlier films. The Woman in the Fifth is an occasionally frustrating film, that relies a little too heavily on ambiguity in it’s depiction of the unravelling of one man’s life. Which is not to say that there isn’t still plenty to admire here. It’s an incredibly well-directed film, Pawlikowski’s use of extreme close-ups and out of focus backgrounds doing an excellent job of getting us inside the increasingly unreliable head of the main protagonist. The film also has a slow, dream-like quality that gives the film an effective and atmospheric build-up to it’s final revelations. Cinematographer Ryszard Lenczewski (who has worked with Pawlikowski on both his previous films and also shot Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret) ensures that the film is visually impressive and also makes good use of the seedier side of Paris.
Pawlikowski also manages to get some excellent performances from his cast. Ethan Hawke does initially seem to be sleep-walking through his role, but this soon makes sense as you soon realise just how troubled a character he is. Like the script, Hawke manages to hint at the darkness beneath the surface of Tom’s character. Exactly what happened between Tom and his wife is never explained (other than a hint that violence was involved), but as the film progresses Hawke gives occasional glimpses of Tom’s darker side in brief uncontrolled outbursts. As a result it’s a performance that gets more compelling as the film goes on. Just how much can we trust this character and exactly what is he capable of? Kristin Scott Thomas is reliably excellent as the mysterious woman who lives in the Fifth Arrondissement (hence the title) and Joanna Kulig also impresses as Ania.
The downside is that after all the effective build-up, the film never quite delivers in it’s final moments and Tom’s disintegration seems a little rushed. For once Pawlikowski’s tendency for brief running times (all his features are under 90 minutes) works against him, as I would have liked the ending to be a little more drawn out. Instead it just seems to end with many elements left unresolved.
Despite this, The Woman in the Fifth is still a film worth seeking out. An atmospheric and beguiling thriller that works incredibly well for most of it’s short running time. Most audiences will perhaps find the ambiguity a little off-putting and prefer more definite answers but as a study of a man’s fragile state of mind it’s mostly effective. Hopefully the wait for another film from this excellent film-maker won’t be quite as long.
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