Still sporting that old goatee, Ethan Hawke returns to Paris for the first time since “Before Sunset’’ in this sluggish and murky sub-Polanski-esque psychodrama, playing a man stranded in the City of Light after an attempted reconciliation with his estranged wife fails and his luggage is stolen.
He ends up at a sleazy hotel, where the owner offers him a job as a night watchman at a nearby building where illegal activities are quite possibly occurring. He also becomes involved with both a half-French, half-Romanian older woman (Kristin Scott Thomas, wasted) and a Polish barmaid who may well be the hotel owner’s girlfriend.
The title “Woman in the Fifth’’ refers to Paris’ Fifth Arrondissement, but not a whole lot more is clear in Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski’s great-looking but pretentious adaptation of a Douglas Kennedy novel.