Review of The Woman in the Fifth (2011) by James M — 29 Feb 2012

The Woman In The Fifth.

First off, the acting from the three leads of Ethan Hawke, Joanna Kulig and Scott-Thomas is off the chart. The sincerity of their performances coupled with the delicious muted cinematography, is definitely the film's success. The problem with the film is that whilst it has the spirit of both Polanski and Lynch, the film drifts into territory of such mass vagueness and supernatural peculiarity, that one is left feeling a little misguided by its strong opening. The crux of the story is that Ethan Hawke arrives in Paris to see his little girl, but his wife has a restraining order against his name, so this proves difficult for him. After having his luggage stolen (he falls asleep on a bus and wakes up at the end of the line with no suitcase) he ends up in a cheap and nasty room above an even cheaper and nastier bar. This becomes his home whilst he dreams up ways he can communicate with his daughter.

Despite a few tiresome irks, The Woman In The Fifth is all pretty well done; its mysteries may be confusing but they're beautifully constructed and deeply felt. My favourite examples of this were scenes between Ethan Hawke and Polish actress, Joanna Kulig. The background of how they meet, is that she recognises him - he is an author, with a tiny bestseller under his belt and she picks up a copy of it in Polish - and through their brief conversations about his daughter and literature, they become warm. There's a sweet moment where he asks her to read a passage of his book she's just bought, but he wants her to read it as it's translated; in her native Polish tongue. She does this for a couple of sentences and stops - giggling and looking embarrassed - but he encourages her to continue, remarking "I like the way it sounds" as his reason, regardless of which bit she's reading; he understands none of it but becomes smitten. Whilst the characters of Hawke and Scott-Thomas' are intentionally odd and perhaps have the more angular relationship - I preferred his scenes with Joanna Kulig. On one hand, their relationship is romantic and beautiful, but it's also shrouded in a kind of dense and prurient melancholy. You can truly see this in my favourite scene of the film, where her and Ethan Hawke are lying on the roof of a building under the Parisien night sky. She works in the crappy, rundown bar that Hawke's character now lives above, but she likes to read; particularly the Polish poet, Cyprian Norwid, which she introduces to the Ethan Hawke's character. Anyway, in this scene (gives me chills just playing it back in my head) she reading to him and then just stops... and she looks at him. There is a long silence whilst they stare at each other - no score in the background - and she starts singing in Polish. The beauty and purity of both her voice and the way her language dripped like honey from her tongue was humbling. I - like Ethan Hawke's character - was hanging on to every sound of this girl's voice. He just looks at her expressionless; unreadable and vacant.. But as she continues singing this softly projected song - without taking her eyes off him and about 10 inches away from his face - he suddenly breaks..

...he bursts into tears (a response which I would argue wasn't written in the script) and almost immediately he takes her face in his hands and kisses her.

So, an interesting film but not without its problems; some harder to ignore than others.