JoeKulik Pawel Pawlikowski's Woman In The Fifth (2011) is just a VERY POOR film, in my opinion. The character of Tom Ricks is ill conceived and quite frankly pathetic. Tom, overall, is portrayed as just being a very STUPID man, a LOSER. He even acts STUPID most of the time, as when he tries to exit the attorney's office through the wrong door, and when he loses his luggage and money when he falls asleep on the bus, and he consistently wears a STUPID, LOSER expression on his face throughout the whole film. His expression reminds me of a deer caught in the headlights. There is nothing in Tom's character that would suggest that he was a college lecturer and a novelist, as he says he is in the film. There is a suggestion early in the film that Tom was previously in a hospital, presumably a mental hospital, and his "imaginary" lover Margrit, I suppose, is supposed to be a psychotic hallucination. But mentally ill people don't act the way Tom does. The screenwriter and the director failed to differentiate between mental illness and STUPIDITY.Although Tom's supposedly a former college lecturer and a novelist, he can't find a better job in Paris than working as a "guard" of some sort. Even without a work permit, someone with Tom's education would be able to find a better job "off the books" just by going around Paris and talking to people, by using the verbal skills that enabled him to write a novel. and to be a lecturer on literature. He even looks pathetic and incompetent in his first approach to Margrit at the literary party. His verbal skills in trying to "pick up" Margrit are pathetic.The whole premise that Tom came all the way to Paris just to be with his daughter is ill conceived. He seems to have moved to Paris without any preparation, with no place to stay, and no job prospects. Only a LOSER would move from the USA to Paris so unprepared. That he stumbles into a café after his money is stolen where the owner,Serez is willing to give him a room without any money up front is an unreal :coincidence". That the same Serez just happens to have an "off the books" job for Tom when he needs one is another unreal "coincidence". Such "unreal coincidences" in a screenplay indicate a weak substitution of a literary artifice for real creative thought.That Tom would become involved with the café waitress Annia without knowing that she is already Serez's girlfriend is just STUPID. Only a LOSER could spend as much time at the café as Tom did without picking up on the fact that Serez already had something going with Annia. That Annia would be so forward in her attempts to seduce Tom without at least advising him that she has some sort of romantic attachment to Serez, an obviously "bad dude", is even more STUPID.The whole nature of the "guard" job that Serez gives Tom is STUPID. Tom seems to understand that there is something shady going on behind the locked door that he monitors, but is seemingly not concerned that his "guard" job might be implicating him in criminal activity. That the viewer is never informed about what the nature of the "mysterious" business is behind the door that Tom is "guarding" is even more STUPID, and is merely indicative of a flaky screenplay.The whole business about Margrit is STUPID. The detective that was questioning Tom goes to Margrit's apartment only to return to tell Tom that Margrit committed suicide years before. So if Margrit is just some sort of psychotic hallucination by Tom, then how did Tom get the illusory woman's name correct, and even know her correct address? Psychotic hallucinations don't travel back in time and "attach" themselves to already dead people, and to their last known address when they were alive. What Tom was experiencing was more like a paranormal, or a voodoo experience, and nothing like mental illness at all. People who are mentally ill enough to hallucinate do not do so only part of the time. People mentally ill enough to hallucinate as vividly as Tom supposedly did about Margrit, are VERY mentally ill ALL of the time. The character Tom in this film is not convincingly portrayed as being mentally ill at all, but, rather, as a LOSER. And LOSERS do not have psychotic hallucinations but rather, are more likely to end up sitting on a street curb in skid row drinking out of a wine bottle.After the detective tells Tom that Margrit killed herself years ago, why didn't Tom produce the calling card Margrit gave him at the party, or advise the detective about the bookstore owner who invited Tom to that party? Tom isn't shown going back to the bookstore owner to try to confirm that a "real" Margrit even attended the party. There's a BIG "hole" in the storyline right here.Overall, there is no discernible "meaning" in this film for me. This film doesn't even "just spins a good yarn" because the film doesn't even give the viewer any kind of clear story. It's just about the aimless wanderings of an inadequate, incompetent man, a LOSER, with a consistently STUPID look on his face that has some kind of paranormal, or voodoo experience involving a woman who's been dead for many years.THIS FILM IS A LOSER. The money and time spent on making this film was just a WASTE.

paul2001sw-1 '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.

tomsview If you enjoy a movie with loads of atmosphere that leads you deeper and deeper into a complex mystery, and then refuses to give easy answers, then you will love "The Woman in the Fifth" - I know I do.An American writer, Tom Ricks (Ethan Hawke), arrives in Paris to try to meet with his daughter. His ex-wife immediately calls the police and we realise that there has been some ugly history between them.Broke, Tom is given a room in a seedy hostel in exchange for taking a job as a nightwatchman in the basement of a strange building. At a literary gathering he meets Margit Kadar (Kristen Scott Thomas). Margit lives in the fifth arrondissement - the woman in the fifth - and they have an affair. His life starts to take unexpected turns. At the hotel, he also has an affair with a young Polish waitress, and a confrontation with the aggressive man in the next room. All the while, trying various ways to see his daughter.By the end of the film there has been a murder, a kidnapping, and revelations about Margit Kadar that reveal that all is not right with Tom Ricks. Not much is explained at the end - the last scene leaves us wondering.Movies that blur the line between what is real and what is being imagined have been around for a while now. Back in the days of Film Noir it usually turned out that it was all just a dream - a not too satisfying resolution that quickly became trite. However, over the last couple of decades, movies that blur the line have become much trickier.The process in more recent times may have started with movies that are not exactly ghost stories, but feature people who don't know they are dead. A forerunner was "Carnival of Souls" in 1962, but Haley Joel Osment in "The Sixth Sense" wasn't the only one to see dead people, they popped up in "Jacob's Ladder", "The Others", "Passengers", and "November" to name a few.Then there are the split personalities - the cinematic interpretation of schizophrenia. David Lynch's films, "Lost Highway" and "Mulholland Dr." come to mind. Then there is "Fever", "A Beautiful Mind", and the recent "I, Anna" as well as "Trance", which have explored this phenomenon. "The Woman in the Fifth" belongs with this group.Although that tricky shift between the real and the imaginary has probably been seen a few times too often now, "the Woman in the Fifth" does it well. This intriguing film has an affecting central story, a fascinating location and compelling performances all round.

tigerfish50 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.