rps-2 Gotta problem here! Have no idea whatsoever what this movie was all about. Yet I enjoyed it. The photography, the grim background music, the seamy surroundings in the gritty underbelly of Paris, the many angry, brooding characters, combine to create a foreboding and ominous mood. Technically the film is a masterpiece. But what the hell is it all about??? A rather screwed up American writer goes to Paris and gets even more screwed up. What was going on in the mysterious underground bunker? Who committed the murder and what was the motive? Was their any explanation of the 1992 suicide? What was the stuff in the forest all about? Who was the woman? What actually happened to the little girl? Where did our mixed up writer go at the end? You know from the early scenes that nobody will be living happily ever after. Indeed there is some reason to believe a couple of them won't even live at all! (Deliberately vague here to keep the spoilers as fuzzy as possible.) And why are there so many trains, train tracks and train sounds? If you like to analyze camera angles and have an interest in film production, you'll enjoy it the way I did. If you like artsey dartsey symbolism and long discussions about what it all means, this is your film. If you want to be entertained, avoid it. If you don't want to get depressed and suicidal, avoid it like the plague. Really odd but very well done film!

Claudio Carvalho The American professor of literature and novelist Tom Hicks (Ethan Hawke) travels to Paris to see his beloved daughter Chloé (Julie Papillon) that lives with her mother Nathalie (Delphine Chuillot). However, Nathalie uses the restraining order to call the police and avoid letting Tom to meet Chloé. Tom flees from the police and takes a bus but he is tired and sleeps. When he awakes in a poor neighborhood, he finds that his luggage and money were robbed. He goes to a bar and the Polish waitress Ania (Joanna Kulig) brings a coffee for him. He asks for a room and explains that he had been robbed and she asks him to talk with the owner Sezer (Samir Guesmi) that allows him to stay in a very low budget room and pay him later. Then Sezer offers a job of night watchman in a suspect building. One day, Tom goes to a bookstore and is invited to a party with writers where he meets Margit Kadar (Kristin Scott Thomas), who is a translator and widow of a Hungarian writer. She gives her address and telephone to Tom. Soon Tom has a love affair with Margit at her apartment and with Ania on the roof of the bar. But Tom is also obsessed by his daughter, snooping around Chloé during the days. When his next door neighbor at the hotel that is blackmailing Tom is found dead, his only alibi is Margit. But when the police officers go to her place, they discover that she had committed suicide many years ago."La femme du Vème" is one of those movies like "Triangle" where there is no explanation for bizarre and surrealistic situations. I am not sure whether the director Pawel Pawlikowski had this intention or not, but forget any explanation about the plot and simply enjoy (or not) the movie. David Lynch is the master of this style while Claude Chabrol was the French master of thrillers with open endings to make the viewer think and discuss possibilities. But this is the practically unknown Pawel Pawlikowski and I was disappointed with the lack of conclusion of the good plot. But as an unconditional fan of Kristin Scott Thomas and Ethan Hawke, I do not regret this strange experience. My vote is five.Title (Brazil): "Estranha Obsessão" ("Weird Obsession")

robert-temple-1 This is a surrealistic tour de force shot in French by Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski, who also wrote the screenplay based upon the novel by American author Douglas Kennedy. Two of Kennedy's other novels have been filmed previously, the last being THE BIG PICTURE (2010), also shot in French. As for Pawlikowski, this is his fourth feature film, the previous one being MY SUMMER OF LOVE (2004). Before that he was a highly praised director of documentaries for British television. This film is very much in the tradition of André Breton's surrealistic novel NADJA, which has inspired so much of subsequent French fiction and cinema. We have the mysterious woman who may be mad, whom the novelist hero cannot resist, we have the strange regions of Paris, we have the atmosphere of dream and illusion. Hawke, having been rejected by his ex-wife and forbidden to approach or speak to his daughter, gets onto a Paris bus and falls asleep. He is woken at the end of line to discover that his luggage and all his money has been stolen from him while he slept. He goes into a small Arab café near the bus stop to order a coffee and try to think what to do. The Arab owner offers him a room to stay in in return for confiscating his passport. The owner is married to a pathetic, depressed young Polish girl who dreams of better things but is trapped in her circumstances. Hawke, unable to sort out any other possibility for himself, accepts a mysterious night job operating access to a gangster hideout associated with the owner of the café. One day he wanders into a bookshop and is recognised by a man working there as the author of a well-known novel. The man enthusiastically invites him to a gathering of poets and writers, which he attends some days later. There he meets the infinitely mysterious 'woman of the Fifth' ('the Fifth' here is a section of the Left Bank of Paris, not a measure of whiskey), named Margit, played with arch menace and erotic intensity by Kristin Scott Thomas. He appeals to her and he ends up becoming involved with her at her insistence. But then bizarre things begin to happen. People start getting killed and he is arrested for a murder he did not commit. He takes refuge in the arms of Joanna Kulig, the young Polish actress who plays the café owner's wife. This too has consequences. Things become increasingly complex and inexplicable, and events seem to become more and more imaginary, as Hawke struggles to understand what is happening. The film's atmosphere is thick enough to cut with a knife, and the film is very artfully made. If you want to be puzzled and fascinated by mysteries which appear insoluble, this is for you.

edyn13 You do not often get the opportunity to see such a beautifully crafted film. This film is seamless in the way it shows you what it chooses to show you. Genius cinematography! If you compare this film to mainstream cinema, of course you are not going to be happy. This film is not mainstream and its not trying to be. The way I see it is that everything you see and hear reflects exactly what someone living with psychosis or another severe mental illness would experience. The film has many similarities to "Black Swan" in that way. The entire 90 minutes of the film you are taken on a psychotic journey. Nothing makes sense. There are glimpses of normalcy and then everything goes back to chaos with no real conclusion. The story's journey mimics what it must be like to be in the psyche of the mentally ill.The dark shots, the cloudy skies and colourless rooms are all reflections of Tom's twisted psyche. A metaphorical dark hell if you will. My guess is that Tom is actually locked up somewhere. The images on screen are really a portrayal of Tom's distorted thoughts during the past 90 minutes while he stares blankly at the white walls that surround him.