In Lucile Hadžihalilović’s fingers, a mirror is a harmful factor. Actual mirrors, metaphysical mirrors, mirrors that go each methods. The Ice Tower, which is loosely impressed by Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, is nothing if not a meditation on notion. It appears to be like at how we understand ourselves, how others understand us, and the way these instructions are sometimes interchangeable. So, too, will be the very title of the movie. Glace, in French, can imply both ice or mirror.
For Jeanne (Clara Pacini), a 15-year-old orphan woman, an attuned self-perception might come at a value. Spending a lot of her days climbing into the snow-covered mountains that dot the yard of the orphanage at which she stays, Jeanne desires of leaving the isolation of her claustrophobic, overcrowded confinement. She bonds with one of many youngest ladies, however in any other case wanders away or stares at a picture of an ice rink within the close by metropolis.
A mountain hike ends with a brutal fall down a steep ice slope, and Jeanne hitchhikes to the ice rink, as a substitute of again to the orphanage. At evening, the rink looms, with string lights inviting her in. There, Jeanne watches Bianca (Valentina Vezzoso) pirouette with sleek ease. However the skater politely refuses to assist Jeanne discover a mattress for the evening, and so she resorts to breaking into the basement of a constructing earlier than falling asleep in a shed. When she wakes, she is seemingly visited by The Snow Queen (Marion Cotillard), the elegant, mysterious determine from the e-book Jeanne likes to learn.
The Ice Tower Takes The Form Of A Fantasy & The Kind Of A Dream In Surreal Adaptation
Hadžihalilović’s movie typically takes the form of a fantasy movie. By way of the eyes of her youthful protagonist, the world is a startling place of thriller. Like in so many fantasies, Jeanne steps into one thing of a rabbit gap, assumes a brand new id, and is launched to a realm that appears far past the scale of her personal. Regularly painted in photographs which are directly attractive and aching, The Ice Tower pulsates with the colourful creativeness of a youngster on the brink of maturity.
However The Ice Tower is not any kids’s movie. When Jeanne awakes, she realizes she shouldn’t be being visited by any fairy queen however by an actress, Cristina (Cotillard), on a sound stage, in a movie adaptation of Andersen’s story. And, shortly after, after an auspiciously timed foray into city, Jeanne retrieves Bianca’s identification and decides to tackle her glamorous title and persona when confronted by the crew. All of the sudden, Jeanne is Bianca, an additional in a movie with a diva at its heart, being welcomed in by its mega-star as one thing between a protégé and a puppet.
In contrast to Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, which seems like an apparent precursor as a lot as different metatheatrical movies like Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2, the psychology of Jeanne/Bianca and Cristina is reasonably easy. Jeanne is an orphan due to her mom’s loss of life by suicide; Cristina shortly turns into a surrogate. Cristina’s childhood was misplaced, too, and it’s clear she views Jeanne as her personal redo. However they’re each treating one another with child gloves. Whereas Jeanne is fascinated and enamored with Cristina’s stardom, she overlooks her apparent cruelty. Cristina, in the meantime, willingly overlooks Jeanne’s lies — about her age, her title, her expertise.
The Ice Tower is a sluggish, glacial affair, however not in an disagreeable method. Its creeping tempo allows its dreamy ambiance, led to in breathtaking photographs. In ways in which touch upon the movie equipment itself, Hadžihalilović and cinematographer Jonathan Ricquebourg body many frames inside frames: Jeanne peering at Cristina via peepholes and cracks of doorways and closets, watching playback of scenes they’ve simply shot, the windowpanes encompassing the frivolously falling snow. However that tempo comes at a value. Olivier Messiaen’s rating is haunting and provocative, but it surely, and Hadžihalilović’s route, counsel a construct in the direction of a payoff that by no means actually comes.
Nonetheless, even when the movie has a tough time sustaining its curiosity, it may possibly at all times depend on these startling compositions. It’s the kind of movie that asks for a deeper engagement than it’s keen to supply, however Hadžihalilović could be pulling us into her conception of image-making as a strategy of self-actualization. If that’s the case, the movie does effectively to interrupt from Andersen’s tragic story for one thing a bit extra existential.
As Jeanne grows quickly earlier than our eyes, we’re left to marvel whether it is ever really attainable to keep up your personhood in a job that requires shedding of the pores and skin to inhabit that of one other. In The Ice Tower, that query is a matter of life and loss of life.
The Ice Tower screened on the 2025 Past Fest.
- Launch Date
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September 17, 2025
- Runtime
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118 minutes
- Director
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Lucile Hadzihalilovic
- Writers
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Geoff Cox, Lucile Hadzihalilovic
- Producers
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Muriel Merlin
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Marion Cotillard
Cristina / The Snow Queen
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Clara Pacini
Jeanne / Bianca