Beautiful and glacial in equally frosty measure, Lucile Hadžihalilović’s “The Ice Tower” is all art-film-only vibes, a wintry Nineteen Seventies fairy story a few display actress who casts a probably harmful spell. It’s anchored by an actress, Marion Cotillard, who has one of many nice faces, and a classical sophistication with a glamorous, out-of-reach noirish magnificence that pairs splendidly with a creature reduce out of Hans Christian Andersen: amorous, elusive, however wounded.
Shot gorgeously in France and Northern Italy by cinematographer Jonathan Ricquebourg — that is really essentially the most visually astonishing film up to now to premiere on the 2025 Berlinale — “The Ice Tower” will show an uneasy catch for commercially minded audiences on the lookout for something greater than a temper in characteristic kind. However these desirous to be hypnotized by cinema, as this movie actually does put you in a state of trance, will get pleasure from a novel expertise from the director of “Innocence” and “Evolution,” and spouse and artistic companion of Gaspar Noé, who cameos on this movie as a director operating a ’70s movie set manufacturing led by an enigmatic star.
Hadžihalilović and screenwriter Geoff Cox graft the fundamentals of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” right into a much less mythic however extra up to date story in regards to the energy and pull of artifice. Newcomer Clara Pacini stars as Jeanne, a 16-year-old orphaned after the demise of her mom, the one reminiscence of which exists within the type of a handful of beads she purloined from the mom’s useless physique. She’s whisked off to an orphanage excessive away within the mountains — and the place, precisely, “The Ice Tower” is ready by no means actually issues, as though it’s set within the ’70s, the setting feels firmly out of time and place. Jeanne, although, finally ends up operating away, first stumbling upon an ice rink the place a girl named Bianca is skating to “It’s 5 O’Clock” by Aphrodite’s Baby. Or is it truly set within the ’70s, or only a cinematic area meant to evoke the time interval?
Jeanne, whom we are supposed to perceive as prudish and only a bit sheltered with a face whose inscrutability suggests she hasn’t seen a lot of life in any respect, is struck by the skater and the sexuality she probably wields. Like Hadžihalilović’s 2004 “Innocence,” set at an all-girls boarding faculty the place the brand new college students are introduced in inside coffins, “The Ice Tower” is at its coronary heart (and never that it has a lot of 1) a coming-of-age story about feminine sexuality and company. So when Jeanne, who’s now going by Bianca, unintentionally winds up in a movie studio the place a manufacturing of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” is going down, it’s exhausting to inform whether or not her fascination for Cristina (Cotillard) is extra sexual or mother-daughter. Maybe it may be each.
Cristina and Jeanne’s first introduction is an eerily staged scene that asserts what a corridor of mirrors “The Ice Tower” will likely be, and the way applicable on condition that the framing gadget of Hans Christian Andersen’s story is in reality round a mirror, which right here Hadžihalilović makes use of the digital camera rather than. Jeanne friends by an aperture within the wall the place she’s fallen asleep to see a floating, ethereal Cristina as snow falls down upon her, just for that floating determine to be simply an actress, that snowfall to be faux film set stuff, as a director calls reduce and what Jeanne was truly watching was a movie take.
What follows is a perverse folie à deux between Cristina/The Snow Queen and Jeanne/Bianca, whose relationship borders on erotic however hovers nearer someplace to a mentorship, at first, as soon as Cristina begins taking Jeanne beneath her wing, and Jeanne upstages one other one of many younger extras on set. Their relationship by no means crystallizes into something concrete, which retains “The Ice Tower” firmly within the realm of moody dream area quite than something melodramatic that’s even barely giving by way of emotion.
At one level, Cristina tells Jeanne that they are often collectively perpetually, or depart tomorrow and by no means look again, however Jeanne chickens out on the provide whereas they stare off over a cliff, placing a way of doom over the place their dynamic is headed. At one other, Cristina invitations Jeanne to a drink solely to ghost her on the promise fully, leaving Jeanne standing alone within the chilly and beginning to sense the delusion she’s caught over how a lot this lady would possibly truly be fascinated by her. That their relationship takes a flip in the direction of sexual assault remembers an earlier second within the movie the place Jeanne is picked up on the facet of the highway by a person in a van who guarantees to drop her off “after a short detour.” The world of adults is a harmful one.
By way of temper and tone and its personal artifices and surfaces, “The Ice Tower” is a stunner, shot with Cinemascope framing that brings a vastly dramatic energy to many lengthy, languid close-ups, particularly as Cristina watches the dailies of her film. A soundtrack created with the ondes Martenot, an digital instrument that sounds very like a theremin, creates a dreamlike spell that solely provides to the movie’s trance-making attract. The understated performances and coolly indifferent, shivery hypnotic vibes of this movie received’t be for anybody on the lookout for a narrative, however “The Ice Tower” casts a creepy spell that lingers and even deepens within the thoughts lengthy after it’s over. As solely the perfect spells do.
Grade: B+
“The Ice Tower” premiered on the 2025 Berlin Movie Competition. It’s presently looking for U.S. distribution.
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