The Woman in the Fifth

Dir. Pawel Pawlikowski. 2011, 85 mins. 35mm. With Ethan Hawke, Kristen Scott Thomas, Joanna Kulig. Steeped in eerie ambiguity, Pawlikowksi’s troubling thriller stars Hawke as a divorced American writer newly arrived in Paris, where he has come to reconnect with his daughter. But thanks to a series of disquieting developments—residency in a drab hotel, taking a degrading job as a night watchman, and embarking on an affair with a mysterious, commanding Englishwoman (Thomas)—he begins to lose his already tenuous grip on sanity. Unjustly overlooked on release, The Woman in the Fifth deserves rediscovery as a perfect showcase for Hawke’s brooding intensity and Pawlikowski’s turn-of-the-screw tonal mastery.

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