The Woman in the Fifth.

Tom meets the elegantly beautiful Margit Kadar.

Based on a book by American novelist Douglas Kennedy, who also wrote the novel the French film The Big Picture (2010) was based upon, The Woman in the Fifth (2012) relates a story of a beleaguered American professor who falls in love with a strange women who isn’t quite the person she seems.  The film stars Ethan Hawke as Tom Ricks a University Professor who travels to Paris to see his estranged daughter. 6-year-old Chloe is living with her French mother who has taken out a restraining order to stop Ricks from associating with them. On arrival in France he is mugged and loses both his luggage and his wallet, which forces him to take a room in a run down lodging house and accept work as a bizarre night guard for the low life landlord Sezer who owns the seedy Hotel. Movie Ramble favourite Kristin Scott Thomas plays Margit Kadar who Tom meets at a literary evening and with whom he starts a passionate affair but is only allowed to meet her at specific times! When Tom needs her to give him an alibi in connection with a murder the local police think he’s involved with, he discovers some rather unnerving facts about this elegant, mysterious Hungarian widow.

6 year old Chloe uses the same optician as her Dad!

Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski  (Last Resort 2000, My Summer of Love 2004) this menacing psychological thriller is a rather strange intriguing movie with an inconclusive ending?  Although it’s quite enjoyable with some credible acting, it does leave viewer with an awful lot of unanswered questions, perhaps another viewing would help!