In New York City, she manufactures a meeting with Clyde at a cafeteria and introduces herself as Alice, a biologist who specializes in studying frogs and who has recently returned from an extended project in Tasmania.

Clyde's friend and coworker Tom is preparing for a birthday party with his wife Ramina, an aspiring jewelry designer.

She explains that she has spent the last fifteen years living under a string of assumed identities, abandoning them and moving on whenever she begins to feel trapped.

When Nina sprains her ankle they help her back to her nearby apartment, with Alice claiming to be a pediatric cardiac surgeon.

In a public restroom, Alice dumps her credit cards, but keeps her driver's license, which she puts in a scrapbook containing all her old identities.

In November 2014, it was revealed that Michael Shannon and Rachel Weisz had been cast in the film, with Joshua Marston directing from a screenplay he wrote with Julian Sheppard, with Lars Knudsen and Jay Van Hoy producing under their Parts & Labor banner, also marking Marston's first English language film.

[13] Guy Lodge of Variety wrote: "After a tantalizing pre-credit sequence teases the tumbling plethora of forms assumed by Rachel Weisz’s fascinating femme fatale, the compact puzzler that ensues scrutinizes only one of them, pitting her in an elegant but elusive dialogue with Michael Shannon’s bemused onlooker.

A most surprising change of pace from Marston, following the international social realism of “Maria Full of Grace” and “The Forgiveness of Blood”, this Amazon Studios acquisition might find only a select audience, but could usher in a glossier phase of its helmer’s career.

"[14] John DeFore of The Hollywood Reporter stated: "The viewer might have a hard time imagining an ending that will be both satisfying and truthful; it seems the filmmakers shared that dilemma.