There’s a tendency, when a film is moodily shot and doesn’t have a tidy ending, to nod appreciatively and commend it for “making you think,” or “going in directions you’d never expect.” Sometimes, that’s a fair assessment. Sometimes, as in the case of The Woman in the Fifth, just being arty and mysterious isn’t enough to cover up other shortcomings. Ethan Hawke plays Tom Ricks, an emotionally unstable writer who has traveled to Paris in an attempt to convince his ex-wife to let him see their daughter. Tom clearly has issues; he screams in the street and punches cars when things don’t go his way, so when he loses his belongings and his money, he’s forced to find a room in a shady café, and a job with its even shadier owner. As he mans the cameras at a dodgy crime den by night, Tom meets the mysterious Margit (a sizzling Kristin Scott Thomas) by day. And as the two begin an intense relationship, Tom’s already fragile mental state comes under even greater strain as Margit seems to revel in the chaos that’s overtaking his mind. Pawel Pawlikowski, returning to the director’s chair for the first time since 2004’s excellent My Summer of Love, seems spoiled for choice. There are some truly fascinating elements to be found in this movie – Tom’s desperate quest for custody, the fictional world he creates for he and his daughter to live in, the unseen activities of his boss, the disarming relationship Tom strikes up with a waitress – but Pawlikowski can’t seem to pick one. Instead, he jolts from thread to thread without ever really getting to grips with a single one. Hawke and Scott Thomas are compulsively watchable, creating a tension that is every bit as awkward as it is erotic. But the movie lurches across genre boundaries with scant regard for cohesion. At times it’s a crime-thriller, at others, it’s a psychologically taut melodrama. The changes in tone are too distinct to feel natural, but too lazy to be intentionally jarring. The Woman in the Fifth resides in a peculiar kind of limbo – not unlike its lead character. “I feel like the real me is somewhere else,” says Tom as the mysterious Margit argues that personal despair is actually a good thing. “The me that’s here is a sad double.” The same, unfortunately, can be said for the film as a whole.