We meet Liam Neeson and Olivia Wilde — the two stars of "Third Person" — inside an upscale hotel in Paris.She knocks on the door to his room, and he seems pleased to see her...Or is he? They tease each other, blowing hot and cold, crackling with electricity, until she eventually joins him in bed. It's a great scenethat draws us in: There is so much in this couple's past that we can sense but notyet imagine.
Michael, played by Neeson, is an author who is drinking too much, stuck on his new novel and haunted by whatever it was that led him to leave his wife (Kim Basinger). Anna (Wilde) likes to think she was the reason; she's feisty and tempestuous, and also a writer, who's looking for a critique of her new work from her Pulitzer Prize-winning lover. But both have secrets they're not telling: Michael is haunted by a voice, while Anna is getting mysterious texts from what seems to be another lover.
Director Paul Haggis ("Crash," "The Next Three Days") intercuts this story with two others. We find Julia (Mila Kunis), a recently divorced mother who is accused by her ex-husband Rick (James Franco), a wealthy artist, of trying to harm their son — an incident she insists was an accident. Traumatized by the whole thing, she is working as a hotel maid while Rick opposes her attempts to win visitation rights to her son. Julia is having a hard time keeping it together, which makes us wonder: Is Rick right about her mental instability?