The Ice Tower (2025)

Coming of age magical realist tale - The Ice Tower review by PD

In Lucile Hadžihalilovic's film, loosely inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, a mirror (whether real or metaphorical) is a dangerous thing, and thus the film is in many ways a meditation on perception - how we perceive ourselves, how others perceive us, and how those directions are often interchangeable: 'Glace', its title in French, can of course mean either ice or mirror.

For Jeanne (Clara Pacini -superb throughout, with just the right mix of innocence and experience), a 15-year-old orphan, an attuned self-perception may come at a cost - an early encounter admiring an ice-skater called Bianca pirouette with graceful ease is immediately followed by the skater politely refusing to help Jeanne find a bed for the night, but this only (somewhat implausibly - magic realism dominates throughout) only leads to an encounter with The Snow Queen herself (Marion Cotillard - very convincing), the elegant, mysterious figure from the book Jeanne loves to read. Through the eyes of her youthful protagonist, the world is a startling place of mystery, and as in so many fantasies, Jeanne steps into something of a rabbit hole, assumes a new identity, and is introduced to a realm that seems far beyond the dimensions of her own. Frequently painted in striking images, the film pulsates with the vibrant imagination of a teenager at the brink of adulthood.

But this is no children's film. When Jeanne awakes, she realises she is not being visited by any fairy queen but by an actress, Cristina, on a sound stage, in a film adaptation of Andersen's tale. And, shortly after, Jeanne is able to take on the skater's glamorous name; suddenly, Jeanne is Bianca, an extra in a film with a diva at its centre, being welcomed in by its mega-star as something between a protégé and a puppet. Unlike Ingmar Bergman's Persona, which feels like an obvious precursor as much as other metatheatrical films like Federico Fellini's 8 1/2, the psychology of Jeanne/Bianca and Cristina is rather simple. Jeanne is an orphan because of her mother's death by suicide; Cristina quickly becomes a surrogate. Cristina's childhood was lost, too, and it is clear she views Jeanne as her younger self. But they are both treating each other with kid gloves, and while Jeanne is fascinated and enamoured with Cristina's stardom, she overlooks her obvious cruelty. Cristina, meanwhile, willingly overlooks Jeanne's lies — about her age, her name, her experience.

Many will doubtless find the pace rather too glacial (sorry), but for me this suits its dreamy/nightmarish atmosphere perfectly, and allows comment on the film apparatus itself: Hadžihalilovic and cinematographer Jonathan Ricquebourg frame many frames within frames: Jeanne peering at Cristina through peepholes and cracks of doors and closets, watching playback of scenes they've just shot, the windowpanes encompassing the lightly falling snow. But that pace undoubtedly comes at a cost. Olivier Messiaen's score is haunting and provocative, but it, and Hadžihalilovic's direction, suggest a build towards a payoff that never really arrives - it's perhaps the type of film that asks for a deeper engagement than it is willing to offer. But Hadžihalilovic may just be pulling us into her conception of image-making as a process of self-actualization and if that is the case, the film does well to break from Andersen's tragic tale for something a bit more existential. As Jeanne grows rapidly before our eyes, we are left to wonder if it is ever truly possible to maintain your personhood in a job that requires shedding of the skin to inhabit that of another. In The Ice Tower, that question is a matter of life and death. Intriguing stuff.