This is just an incomprehensible mess. It starts okay with
Ethan Hawke coming to Paris trying to patch relationship with his ex-wife and
their daughter. We’re not sure why they parted but we get few hints about him
being aggressive and not completely straight in his head.
Tension then starts to build when he’s mugged on the bus and
forced to take a refuge in some dodgy inn. We go slowly into “mystery” mode
when owner of the inn takes away his password but gives him some weird job of
keeping an eye on empty building. Ethan also starts flirting with his polish
wife and gets to know his annoying ass-hole neighbor. And most importantly we
meet mystery woman in (always beautiful and nice to see) shape of Mrs. Scott-Thomas. So lots of interesting characters and intrigues, shit is looking
promising and stage is all set for things to get resolved.
But in the 3rd act, when movie should go into
highest gear, everything just falls apart. By then we already know that he is a
schizophrenic and lots of things were simply playing in his fucked-up head. And
movie totally fails to clarify what really happened so there is no big twist. Reminded
me a bit of Haute Tension
but in horror flick director can get away with this because “who dunnit” is
obviously not a main point. But it is very much so in mystery/crime movies and Pawlikowski
doesn’t even try to make an effort. Instead he just drops the curtain and
closes the movie. Which is maybe just as well, at least it’s short.
Or maybe he didn’t have final cut and we need to wait for
special edition DVD with his commentary? Well, not me – seeing this once was
enough.
3/10
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