The Woman In The Fifth

The plot of this subdued thriller about an unraveling American novelist (Ethan Hawke) in the City of Light is heavy on mood and murk. But Pawel Pawlikowski, director of My Summer of Love (the superb 2004 drama that launched Emily Blunt), creates a nice sense of paranoia and multicultural bewilderment that’s the welcome tonal opposite of Woody Allen’s romanticized Midnight in Paris fripperies. Hawke is suitably miserable-looking as a writer who, while estranged from his Paris-based wife and missing his young daughter, drifts into shadowy underworld employment and an intense relationship with an alluring, mysterious woman (Kristin Scott Thomas, laying it on) living in the title arrondissement. (Also available on VOD) B-