Tag Archives: ethan hawke

Movie: The Woman in the Fifth

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The Woman in the Fifth stars Ethan Hawke (Before Sunset) and Kristin Scott Thomas (Ne le dis à personne, The English Patient). Tom is a writer and university lecturer in Paris to see his estranged wife and daughter. He is robbed and is stuck at a rundown hotel in a Paris suburb, scraping by with an under-the-table job of questionable legality. He meets Margit at a literary evening and soon they are having a torrid affair. When not with Margit (who will only see him after 4pm), he spends his time writing a lengthy letter to his six-year-old daughter and getting to know the waitress/barmaid at the hotel.

The film starts off normally. That is, totally comprehensible and almost ordinary, but once Tom meets Margit, things become strange. It’s that turning point (as in the film The Last Minute when Billy Byrne takes drugs and everything in the film becomes slightly surreal) where you’re not sure what is real and what is not. It’s a dark film, tension-filled, yet also mostly quiet. There are some dramatic and gory points but a lot is not explained.

I often prefer films where things aren’t so cut and dry at the end; closure is not always the best ending. Most films with definitive endings are ones that I cease to think about the moment the credits roll. Far better to have a film be strange and provoke thought and speculation, or leave some puzzlement. In this case, the film was an excellent advertisement for the novel (by Douglas Kennedy), as I’m inclined to pick it up to see what the screenwriter cut out.

The Unabashed Francophile Post, Part 7: Movies set in Paris

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Sometimes I get a little homesick for Paris. Strange, considering I’ve only been there once, and that was some time ago. But, every once in a while I need to watch a film (or two) set in Paris to get my fix.

First up, the very excellent Before Sunset. It stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy and is the sequel to Before Sunrise (set in Vienna). I’m not a huge fan of either Hawke or Delpy, but I just can’t get enough of this film. It’s a pas de deux; Jesse (Hawke) and Celine (Delpy) meet again in Shakespeare & Co., 9 years after they failed to meet up again in Vienna six months after their first meeting. It’s a very quiet film; there’s not much drama, but a lot of talking. It probably isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I enjoy its intimacy.

Second, La Vie En Rose (La Môme), starring Marion Cotillard as Édith Piaf. The role won Cotillard the Best Actress Oscar, an award incredibly well-deserved. I took everyone I knew to see it in the theatre, merely as an excuse to see it again. Gerard Depardieu also stars, and Jean-Pierre Martins (from the French rock group Silmarils) played Piaf’s lover, the boxer Marcel Cerdan. I’d listened to some of Piaf’s songs before, but this film cemented my admiration and love of chanson. Cotillard lip-syncs, but it would have been difficult for her to match Piaf’s unique voice. Unlike Before Sunset, La Vie En Rose is full of drama; Piaf’s life began in Belleville, and her father was a circus actor, her mother a singer. She traveled with the circus until her father left her with family at a brothel. When she returned to Paris she eked out a living singing in the street, where she was discovered. That part of her life alone would be enough for a film, but there’s more. Always more.

And third, the film Fauteuils d’orchestre (Avenue Montaigne), with Cécile de France, Albert Dupontel, Dani, Sydney Pollack and Valérie Lemercier. Jessica (de France) comes to Paris and finds work in a café across from an arts complex. An art auction, a piano concert and a Feydeau play are occurring on the same evening, and the resulting meetings of all the other characters with the cheerful Jessica are the meat of the film. The interconnectedness is charming; it’s a film that never fails to leave me smiling.

So there you are: three films that help evoke Paris for me. Do you have a place you’re fond of? Or is there a film that evokes a remembrance of a favourite place?