Colder than ice, her kiss pierces the heart… In the 1970s, tunaway Jeanne (Clara Pacini) falls under the spell of Cristina (Marion Cotillard), enigmatic star of The Snow Queen, a film of the Hans Christian Andersen story being shot in the studio where Jeanne has taken refuge. A mutual but potentially dangerous fascination begins to grow between the actress and the girl.

The Garden Cinema View:

Lucile Hadžihalilović’s uncompromising cinematic visions are surreal, unsettling, and chilly. Literally her coldest work yet, The Ice Tower nevertheless basks in the half-light of a quasi-fairytale narrative, and the cosy trappings of a South Tyrolian town at Christmas, set against the dark, looming alps. A film-within-a-film plotline sends a faint echo of David Lynch’s Inland Empire through The Ice Tower. Not that Hadžihalilović’s film is nearly as abrasive and disorientating, but rather the film studio itself contains gaps and rabbit holes where reality slips away.

In The Ice Tower’s most mesmerising moments, it resembles an homage to the fairytale melodramas of Powell and Pressburger. The snowfall from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, the mountains of Black Narcissus, and, of course, The Red Shoes. This is filtered through a Jean Cocteau-esque oneiric logic, and the end credits of The Ice Tower do feel a bit like awaking from some vivid dream.  

Cast:
Marion Cotillard, Clara Pacini, August Diehl, Gaspar Noé