Wonderful and glacial in equally frosty dimensions, Lucile Hadžihalilović’s “The istorn“Is everything art-film-We vibber, a winter 1970s saga about a screen actress who throws a potentially dangerous magic formula. It is anchored by an actress, Marion CotillardWhich has one of the big faces and a classic sophistication with a glamorous, outside of nasty beauty that pairs wonderfully with a creature cut by his Christian Andersen: amorous, difficult but hurt.
Shooting amazingly in France and northern Italy by Kinematographer Jonathan Ricquebourg – this is really the most visually astonishing film to date Premiere at 2025 Berlinale – “The Ice Tower” will prove a worried catch for commercially -minded audiences looking for something more than a mood in functional form. But they wanted to be hypnotized by film, because this movie really puts you in a state of trance, will enjoy a unique experience from the director of “innocence” and “evolution” and wife and creative partner to Gaspar Noé, who Komos in it Here’s the film as director who runs a movie set of the 70s led by an enigmatic star.
Hadžihalilović and screenwriter Geoff Cox transplants the basics of his Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” to a less mythical but more contemporary story about the power and draw of Artifice. Newcomer Clara Pacini stars such as Jeanne, a 16-year-old orphan’s parent leader after her mother’s death, whose only memory is in the form of a handful of pearls that she purloined from her mother’s dead body. She has shown herself to an orphanage high away in the mountains – and there, exactly, “The Ice Tower” is never really important, because even if it is set in the 70s, the setting is stuck on time and place. Jeanne, however, ends up running away, first stumbles on an ice rink where a woman named Bianca skates for “five” by Aphrodite’s children. Or is it actually in the 70s, or just a movie space intended to induce the time period?
Jeanne, who we are supposed to understand as prudish and just a little protected with a face whose invoice indicate that she has not seen much of life at all, is struck by the skater and the sexuality she potentially practices. Like Hadžihalilovi, 2004 “Innocence”, which was put at an All-Girl’s boarding school where the new students are taken into the coffins, is “The Ice Tower” in their heart (and not that it has much of a) an upcoming age of age story About female sexuality and agency. So when Jeanne, who now goes by Bianca, accidentally ends up in a movie studio where a production of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” takes place, it is difficult to say about her fascination for Cristina (Cotillard) is more sexual or mother – daughter. Maybe it can be both.
Cristina and Jeanne’s first introduction is a strangely strange scene that announces what a mirror hall “The Ice Tower” will be, and how appropriate given that the framing device for Hans Christian Andersen’s story is in fact around a mirror, which here Hadžihalilović uses the framework camera instead of. Jeanne comrades through an opening in the wall where she falls asleep to see a floating, ethereal Cristina when Snow falls down on her, just because the floating figure is just an actress, that snowfall to be false movie sets, which director calls cut and what Jeanne actually looked at was a movie.
The following is a perverse foil à deux between Cristina/The Snow Queen and Jeanne/Bianca, whose relationship borders on erotic but hovers closer to a mentoring, at once, when Cristina starts to take Jeanne under her wing, and Jeanne increases another of one of one of one of one of a mentoring the young extra on set. Their relationship is never crystallized to anything concrete, which keeps the “istorn” stuck in the kingdom with moody dream space rather than something melodramatic that even gives something when it comes to emotions.
At one point Cristina Jeanne says they can be together forever, or leave tomorrow and never look back, but Jeanne chicks at the offer while staring over a cliff and putting a feeling of ruin over where their dynamics are on the way. At another, Cristina Jeanne offers a drink just to ghost her promise altogether and leaves Jeanne standing in the cold and begins to feel the illusion she has captured how much this woman can actually be interested in her. That their relationship takes a trip to sexual abuse is reminiscent of an earlier moment in the movie where Jeanne is picked up on the side of the road by a man in a van who promises to release her “after a short detour.” The world of adults is dangerous.
When it comes to mood and tone and its own artists and surfaces, “The Ice Tower” is a Stunner, shot with Cinemascope that frames that give an extremely dramatic force to many long, narrow close -ups, especially when Cristina looks at the diaries in her film. A soundtrack created with the Martenot of Onde’s martenot, an electronic instrument that sounds much like a Theremin, creates a dreamlike spell that only adds the film’s trance manufacturing. The discreet performances and cool standalone, shaking hypnotic vibes in this movie will not be for someone looking for a story, but “The Ice Tower” throws a scary magic form that remains and even deepened in the mind long after it is over. That only the best magic formulas do.
Rating: B+
“The Ice Tower” premiered at 2025 Berlin Film festival. It is currently seeking US distribution.
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