The Ice Tower: another cryptically macabre and magical fable from Lucile Hadžihalilović
Marion Cotillard’s impressive performance as a glacial screen diva is matched by newcomer Clara Pacini in Hadžihalilović’s coolly calibrated vision of The Snow Queen.
It’s understandable, given its wintry setting and inspiration from Hans Christian Andersen’s 1844 fairytale The Snow Queen, that the original title of Lucile Hadžihalilović’s La Tour de glace, would be translated as The Ice Tower. But the hypnotic opening sequence, all close-up kaleidoscopic fragments of snowbound landscapes and refracted light, hints at another possible English translation of the French word glace: mirror. It captures an adolescent girl’s journey through the metaphorical looking glass of the film-within-a-film’s Andersen adaptation; and the fractured relationship she forms with the enigmatic movie star playing the Snow Queen herself.
Jeanne (Clara Pacini) is a lonely teenager in a loveless foster home somewhere in provincial France in the 1970s. Her sole consolation, it seems, is reading bedtime stories – specifically The Snow Queen – to a younger fostered girl. So when Jeanne runs away and seeks shelter in a dank basement in the nearby town, it’s more than fortuitous that she inadvertently stumbles upon the studio-set shoot of a movie of her favourite Andersen fable, starring notorious diva Cristina van der Berg (Marion Cotillard).
Hadžihalilović’s previous features (Innocence, 2004; Evolution, 2015; Earwig, 2021) created entire dark fantasy worlds within which its youthful protagonists were at the mercy of shadowy adults with opaquely sinister motives. Here, if you strip away the ‘moviemaking magic’ (a generous term for what looks like a joyless filmmaking slog), it’s Jeanne alone who imagines some kind of dream world, in front of and behind the camera.
Still, as a body of work, there’s a remarkable consistency to Hadžihalilović’s haunted fairytale visions, replete with disquieting soundscapes (here courtesy of sound designer Ken Yasumoto’s crystalline ambient tones) and elemental symbolism: the flowing water imagery of Innocence and Evolution gradually freezing into the ice dentures of Earwig’s child protagonist and now spread into Cristina/Snow Queen’s frigid realm.
The Ice Tower is a more adult coming-of-age tale than these previous three works. Jeanne assumes the alias Bianca, the name of a young woman whose skating skills transfixed her at the local ice rink (the 1969 Euro-pop number ‘It’s Five O’Clock’ by Aphrodite’s Child as accompaniment is spot on). Jeanne/Bianca’s gradual insinuation into The Snow Queen’s production process – first hiding out on set, then mistaken for an extra, and finally, at Cristina’s behest, cast in a key supporting role – allows her to project an even more potent alter ego. We learn that Jeanne’s mother overdosed when her daughter was just six years old. Her love of the Snow Queen, she tells Cristina, is that the character is immortal. “But she’s alone,” observes the star. “She has her kingdom,” counters the ingénue. Cristina fixes her with a piercing look. “You think that’s enough?”
Recognising the star-struck teen’s fascination, the glamorous actress deigns – or is it feigns? – to take Jeanne under her wing, setting in motion a twisted emotional pas de deux. It turns out that Cristina escaped a foster home too, one of several parallels in Hadžihalilović and Geoff Cox’s minimalist, allusive screenplay. As Jeanne wanders the film set after hours, her own internal movie-like visions blur her desires – does she want to become the Queen’s loyal subject, surrogate daughter, or even the monarch herself?
Hadžihalilović tends to prioritise tone and texture over narrative and dialogue, and this glacially paced, coolly calibrated new work is no exception. Much hangs on what her two lead actresses can convey with a studied look or deliberate gesture. Cotillard, who appeared in Innocence before she ascended to award-winning international stardom, skilfully captures an entitled artiste’s vampiric poise and the more brittle, jaded woman behind the dazzling façade.
Perhaps more surprisingly, newcomer Pacini’s wonderfully transparent expressions, mixing fragility and inner strength, match her: she’s a genuine find. Where Andersen’s original tale ended as a triumph of teamwork and summertime thawing, Hadžihalilović refuses to succumb to such communal, cosy comforts. Jeanne’s liberation, if it even comes, will be a hard-fought, frostbitten solo effort. Maybe this also mirrors the icy rigour of the filmmaker herself. Hadžihalilović’s cryptically macabre fables fixate on tainted youthful innocence and perverted evolution. She magics up resonant, rewatchable cinematic pleasures with scant reassurance and even less overt humour – though viewers in the know get a laugh from the sight of her real-life partner, the director Gaspar Noé, cameoing as the put-upon Snow Queen movie director in seedy 1970s fashions and an ill-fitting wig.
► The Ice Tower is in UK cinemas 21 November.