The Ice Tower, the latest feature from Lucile Hadžihalilović, is a kaleidoscopic fable that draws on Hans Christian Andersen's Snow Queen. Starring Marion Cotillard as a haughty, damaged diva, the film is a cautionary tale about the dangers of fantasy and idolisation. Hadžihalilović, known for her meticulously controlled and hermetic worlds, here turns her gaze to film-making itself as a rarefied, ritualistic realm.
The story follows teenage orphan Jeanne, played by Clara Pacini, who escapes her foster home and stows away on a film production of the fairytale. The queen is portrayed by Cristina van der Berg, an imperious actress played by Cotillard. Through Jeanne's eyes, the set dressings, fittings and backstage moments become heavy with meaning. Offering herself as an extra, Jeanne is drawn into this world after posing as 'Bianca' and being taken under Cristina's wing as a protege.
As scenes from the shoot bleed into Jeanne's daydreams, the film hovers at a twilight boundary between artificiality and reality, fiction and truth. But this is a story with a darker warning. Jeanne's reverie obscures what she truly seeks from her frosty role model: a mother substitute, an infatuation, or perhaps the desire to become the Snow Queen herself. Cristina, sharing a similar forlorn past, understands the price of such fantasia: 'You think that is enough for her?' she asks of her character's splendid isolation.
Hadžihalilović sets the film in an indeterminate analogue 1970s, a reflection on the dangers of being dazzled by imagery in our digital era. The monster in this fairytale is ambiguous. It could be the director, played by Gaspar Noé, seen slime-ing up another actress. More likely, it is Cotillard, reigning with her trademark damaged hauteur. The film can be read as a #MeToo story with a distinctly French bent, or as a meditation on art itself: hoarding beauty until desire reaches absolute zero.
