8/10
Tom Ricks (Ethan
Hawke) tells the immigration officer at the airport that he has come to
Paris to live, write a novel, and take care of his daughter Chloe while his
ex-wife works during the day. He
probably believes these words as he says them out loud; however, the audience
quickly learns Tom is not welcomed by his ex-wife and six year old Chloe thought
daddy was in prison. We never learn
exactly where Tom came from but it is most likely somewhere unpleasant. Through a combination of errors, Tom manages
to have his luggage stolen, the police are after him for violating a
restraining order, and he winds up at a seedy café/hotel conveniently located
at the last stop on the bus line, never a good neighborhood. Tom Ricks has hit bottom.
The title The Woman in the Fifth refers to
Margit Kadara (Kristin Scott Thomas). While failing spectacularly at small talk at
and upscale function for writers and their elite admirers, Tom has one of those
moments where Margit is the only person in the room he sees, even though there
are 50 some people in the room. They
strike up a conversation where she learns he is a novelist, has had one book
published which was moderately successful, but is now obviously baffled on if
there will be a second book. Tom learns
Margit has lived everywhere, speaks six or seven languages fluently, was a muse
and translator for her late Hungarian husband, and now seems poised to
volunteer to become Tom’s muse.
Tom falls into a job which could only be invented by a
novelist. The Woman in the Fifth is
adapted from the eponymous 2007 novel by Douglas
Kennedy which puts Tom in a job where he is confined to a bare room for six
hours every night to watch a video screen.
When men appear at the door, they will say a prepared phrase, and if
they say the correct phrase, Tom is to press the buzzer to open a door down the
hall. He does not know who these men
are, why they are coming to the door, or who they are meeting behind that
door. What Tom discovers is that behind
that door comes some yelling, occasional screaming, and the power fluctuates
sometimes during that screaming. This is
the perfect job for a novelist who can write uninterrupted for six hours a
night and the perfect mysterious predicament for a novelist to place his
protagonist in.
Two other characters straight out of a novel populate Tom’s
hotel. There is the bar maid (Joanna Kulig) who takes an interest in
Tom and there is his next door neighbor, Omar, who never flushes their shared
toilet and takes an extra special dislike to Tom when he finds out he is
American. As Tom sleepily shuffles around
Paris to visit Margit, keep tabs on his ex-wife and daughter, and spend his six
hours a night behind a locked door with a buzzer, it is refreshing to see him
fall back to the hotel and develop a sweet rapport with the bar maid.
The movie is mysterious, languid and seems to be setting the
audience up for something. What that ‘something’
is I will not say and you will hopefully not learn before you see the
film. Paris seems empty and lonely and
after awhile I just wanted Tom to take a nap because as time progresses, he
looks dead tired and unaware of his surroundings. Pawel
Pawlikowski (My Summer of Love, Last Resort), the director and
screenplay adaptor, allows time to flow by and rarely defines it. The audience loses track of how many days Tom
has been in Paris or if it becomes tomorrow or the day after.
Ethan Hawke does a very good job of keeping the audience on
edge about Tom. He is frequently quiet
and contemplative as he melts into a café booth but every now and then there
are loud outbursts when a bit of news or a situation displeases him. I have seen variations of Kristin Scott
Thomas as Margit before. She is confident,
knows how to relax her company, and easily handles Tom when he is falling
apart; she knows exactly how to put him back together. Joanna Kulig as the bar maid is a wonderful
new presence on screen. She is obviously
native Polish like the director, but must converse in two other languages (English
and French) along with the rest of the cast.
The script shows a narrative strength as I did not realize very often as
it seamlessly slipped from French to English and back again.
After the screening, I overheard a lot of people asking
their friends to explain what happened and either agreeing with them in ‘aha’
moments or shaking their heads in disbelief.
The Woman in the Fifth will most likely polarize the audience between
those who are familiar with films such as these and those that are unfamiliar
with being blindsided and bewildered. I recommend
The
Woman in the Fifth for both types of audience members. For the indoctrinated, you will appreciate a
shadowy script with a fascinating unreliable narrator. For the untested viewer, go and enjoy an
intriguing international cast and get your questions ready at the end.
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