Loosely adapted from a moody, psychological novel, Pawel Pawlikoswki's film plays like a moody, psychological novel — let's say a meditation on the very intimate and personal nature of hell on earth for the living. Pawlikowski though is a director who produces a mood piece that's unnerving because it's not quite what you expect from a mood piece.

Ethan Hawke plays an American academic and literary genius stranded in France. Looming vaguely over his head is a professional disgrace that has not yet gone public, a personal restraining order from an estranged wife, a chronic illness that warranted a lengthy stay in a hospice. None of these are ever explained in detail but Hawke certainly looks the part of a man marked for divine destruction. But what we do know is thanks to a robbery on a bus, the academic is now stuck working as a security man for a drug operation run by the sleazy Algerian kingpin who, in return for this work, loans our poor protagonist a room and board on the top floor of his legit cafe.

This is hell on earth. Or if you're a film buff, Ethane Hawke's urbane professor and writer just fell into a crapsack noir film universe with no escape hatch. In other words, our literary genius has just landed a perfect job in a colourful locale that should inspire him to write a masterpiece or die trying. Yet between disturbing dreams of forests and insects, writing lengthy letters to his daughter, and getting muse-level inspiration from the cafe's barmaid and a mysterious writer (the eponymous woman in the fifth), the sense of impending doom never seems to let up.

Pawlikowski's film doesn't quite tell a coherent or logical story but I suspect that was never his intention anyway. Instead, he seems to be going for a moody and psychological retelling of genre film that brings out the paranoia, darkness, and psychosis better than a mainstream thriller. As a bonus, Ethan Hawke's portrayal of a harried and desperate man is possibly his best cinema showing in years.