When Pawel Pawlikowski first read Douglas Kennedy’s novel The Woman in the Fifth, he was “looking for a starting point for a film that has its own internal logic.” Though the New York Times bestselling author’s romantic thriller wasn’t necessarily close to the Polish filmmaker’s world, he began to imagine how re-shaping the story of Tom Ricks, an American writer watching his life crumble while visiting the City of Lights, could accommodate his style and voice. “I was working on some original story ideas that were a little too personal, so I thought it would be great to make something that had nothing to do with me, in a way. Then I met Ethan, who happened to be in London, and I told him about the project. He said, ‘I’m up for that, let’s do it.’ I began to re-imagine the whole story in terms of an inner journey, and rewrote the script with that in mind.”

Part of what fascinated Pawlikowski about the tale of a down-and-out university lecturer in Paris confronting the failure of his marriage and his writerly ambitions—and seeking to renew the connection with his young daughter—was how easily it accommodated the theme of psychological disintegration, which had interested the accomplished writer-director since his last feature, MY SUMMER OF LOVE. “I wanted Tom Ricks to be a complicated, duplicitous hero, not an everyman who happens to find himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. I wanted the problem to be him, not the world around him. That’s a radical change compared to the novel.” Pawlikowski’s efforts to establish the defining traits of his central character also influenced his stylized approach. “I wanted the film to obey the logic of a dream,” he says. “It starts in a realistic way, then the boundaries of reality gradually start to break down.”

Ethan Hawke met Pawlikowski in London while performing in a Royal Court stage production of Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale. He says he was initially drawn to the set-up and tone of THE WOMAN IN THE FIFTH after discussing the project with Pawlikowski in New York, but neither he nor the director had any “preconceived
notions” about Tom Ricks, who Hawke says, has become “one of my favorite roles.” It was only through an ongoing exchange of ideas and workshops that they were
able to discover the character’s true nature and desires. “For me, this film deals with the torment surrounding one’s desire to be the father you always dreamt of being,” says Hawke. “That’s a subject I’m interested in right now. Everyone has his/her own idea of what it means to be an ideal parent. But you also have to juggle that with the constraints of everyday life.” This aspect of the story resonated deeply with Pawlikowski as well, who says, “The conflict between being creative—and therefore having an ego and involving your ego in your work—and being in love with a woman or trying to be a father means wanting incompatible things. A lot of us find ourselves in this kind of dilemma. That’s something that really drove me on this project.”

For Pawlikowski, it was important that his lead actor be able to win the sympathy of an audience while at the same time communicate something darker and less reassuring. “It’s above all Ethan Hawke who makes this ambiguity work so well,” he says. “By nature, he’s a warm, nice person, with a sort of adolescent candor—that’s what everyone likes about Ethan. I play on that and the image we have of him from his films. He has a simplicity that you want to follow, despite the signs which make us not trust him. And he’s an extraordinary partner for the other actors: he knows how to bring out the best in them, to put them at their ease. He never tries to hog the limelight.”

Although THE WOMAN IN THE FIFTH has some of the trappings of a psychological thriller, Pawlikowski was less interested in exploring genre than in trying to depict a writer’s increasingly unstable frame of mind without veering into fantasy: “The hero’s emotional state is the prism. It’s through him that we perceive the world he moves through. I try to remain as naturalistic as possible, so as not to signpost through cinematic devices that something is not quite right. Events follow one another and gradually we move into the realm of the strange.” Location was crucial, since the atmosphere needed to reflect Tom’s inner turmoil in subtle, but effective ways. Setting the film in France, a country foreign to his American protagonist, accomplished part of this goal, but the real challenge for Pawlikowski was how to defamiliarize such an overused cinematic locale. “In Paris, it’s really difficult to find places that don’t illustrate a cliché, however hard they try,” he says. “Wherever I look here, there are cream colors, and lots of movement. It’s a densely populated city, difficult to manage during a shoot and hard to represent onscreen. I spent a lot of time with my set designer Benoît Barouh criss-crossing the city on his scooter to find unusual locations. I wanted Paris without it being ‘Paris.’ I wanted it to be a bit like Eastern Europe in the 1970s.”

In the midst of deciding the look and feel and overall structure of the film, Pawlikowski also needed to cast the role of Margit, the enigmatic translator who
becomes Tom’s lover and muse. He turned to the renowned European actress Kristin Scott Thomas, whose facility with languages and remarkable ability to project a
variety of personas made her an ideal fit. “Margit is a cloud of mystery, without a clear story – even her nationality is uncertain. For an actor, that’s complicated. She’s fantastic to work with and courageous. She gave me everything I needed and more. She has great elegance in her working relationships.” Hawke concurs, saying, “For me, certain actors embody the very essence of cinema. Kristin Scott Thomas has that quality. She has that strange sensuality, that natural elegance. It’s an experience to act with someone like that. With her, everything seems easy. With others, you have to work really hard to get there. Her character is above all symbolic, and a lot of actors aren’t up for that.”

Working with casting director Stéphane Batut, Pawlikowski then looked to fill the role of Ania, the Polish barmaid who casually befriends Tom and shows him unexpected tenderness, providing a counterpoint to the heavy-handed influence of Margit. Pawlikowski thought immediately of Joanna Kulig, a singer and stage actress he had previously auditioned and believed would be a natural, despite her lack of film experience, thanks to the elegance and precision of her body language. “I like the idea that each scene has to have a musical rhythm,” he says. “It’s not simply a matter of the meaning of the words. It’s about tempo, you have to find a certain swing. Joanna has that.” Hawke recalls that Pawlikowski’s directions to Kulig at one point were simply to “act like a mazurka,” marveling that “she understood exactly what he meant.”

Given the variety of tonal environments, he sought to create—Sezer’s café, Margit’s mystery-shrouded flat, and the dingy, bulb-lit basement room where Tom surveils the exterior of a warehouse every night—Pawlikowski turned to his longtime collaborator Ryszard Lenczewski to handle lensing on THE WOMAN IN THE FIFTH.
During the shoot, the two friends discussed everything from color schemes and set lighting to nuances in performance. “He and I have a very strong understanding,” says Pawlikowski. “It’s rare for things to be that in tune. Usually, between a director and a director of photography, the roles are strictly separated. We work in symbiosis. He knows I’m very visual, and I can count on him to point out what he observed in the acting. He teaches too, at the school in Lodz. He’s made a lot of documentaries, so he’s got a wealth of experience, and he’s never lost his childlike passion for his craft. I work with him in the same way I work with an actor.” Hawke observed the close collaboration between Pawlikowski and his director of photography to achieve the melodious flow of each scene and says, “they were like an orchestra.” He compares their easygoing dynamic to that of “an old-school rock group, where the words alone aren’t the most important thing.”

It was clear from the beginning, says Pawlikowski, that because the world of the film is so ambiguous and plaintive, he would need to add a bit of score to convey Tom’s tenuous mental condition. He brought in English composer Max de Wardener, with whom he’d previously worked on LAST RESORT, to write a few spare themes. After the sound mix was completed in Paris, Sylvain Morizet came in to help arrange the music. “My main instructions to Max,” recalls Pawlikowski, “were to come up with one or two haunting little melodies; I wanted the music to be seductive. MY SUMMER OF LOVE had a similar thing. He came up with two melodies I thought were great, but they were not disturbing, like in a horror movie. They were quite sweet and euphonious, but a little atonal here and there, like AN AMERICAN IN PARIS but a bit off. Producers always want more emotions, but I didn’t want them too explained. The goal was always to be on the tightrope—and that’s a good image for the whole film.”