In this unsettling thriller set in Paris’s little-seen Fifth Arrondissement, an unhappy American writer attempts to mend fences with his wife and young daughter but instead falls under the spell of a mysterious woman. Soon after arriving in the City of Light, author Tom Ricks (Ethan Hawke) is robbed and forced to stay in a dingy hotel where he’s given a strange and covert job. When he subsequently meets the beguiling translator Margit (Kristen Scott Thomas), she spurs him to start writing again, but nightmarish hallucinations haunt his hours. As the plot thickens and the writer’s mental instability grows, enigmatic subsidiary characters offer tantalizing clues to his predicament. With creepy visuals and dark humor, this adaptation of Douglas Kennedy’s international bestseller offers intelligent chills, subtle performances and the most beautiful locale in the world.

Read Mick LaSalle's San Francisco Chronicle review "Ethan Hawke's performance—sympathetic, in pain, sensitive, and on edge—leaves open all possibilities."

 


TRAILER


France/Poland/England 2011, 83 min. Written by Pawel Pawlikowski. Photographed by Ryszard Lenczewski. With Kristin Scott Thomas, Ethan Hawke, Joanna Kulig, Samir Guesmi. ATO Pictuires. In English and French with subtitles.
Tickets $9 for SFFS members, $11 general, $10 senior/student/disabled. Box office now open online at sffs.org and in person at SF Film Society Cinema.