The Unknown Woman of the Seine

Inspired by the death mask of a 19th-century Frenchwoman whose identity has never been discovered, Hansen’s diffuse latest (after Asmodeus) is set during France’s 1889 Exposition Universelle. Traveling through the forests west of Paris, gendarme Emile Brassard comes across the half-buried corpse of a man whose throat has been cut and, nearby, a young woman in a Romani wagon. Her dirty nails and abstracted state make Brassard suspect her of the killing. Solving the murder could help him get restored to active duty after an unjust suspension, so he follows her to the city. When she leaves the wagon behind, Brassard hires a street urchin to follow her while he awaits the woman’s return. As she visits the Eiffel Tower among other Exposition sights, the unnamed woman attracts the attention of artist François Michaud and impresario Bruno Chavarin. Michaud wants to paint her and Chavarin to cast her in one of his revues, but after each befriends her, she vanishes. Meanwhile, the clues to her past Brassard finds under the wagon’s floorboards and a final brief encounter with her prompt Brassard to rethink his career. Though Hansen’s reflection on the way one individual can become the focus of many others’ dreams is thought-provoking, there are too many disparate threads. In the end, it doesn’t quite gel. (Nov.)