Lucile Hadžihalilović's The Ice Tower is that classic tale of the kid who runs away to join the circus. The circus in this case is the film industry of 1970s France. That was an era when the gulf between adolescence and adulthood wasn't so pronounced, when adults didn't think it strange that they were working alongside kids. It reminds us of how Cameron Crowe became a rock critic while barely out of short pants, or how Spielberg wandered onto a Hollywood backlot and found himself directing Joan Crawford within months. But The Ice Tower is tonally a very different film than Almost Famous or The Fabelmans. This is a dark fable that reminds us there are predators waiting to exploit the dreams of the innocent.
Fleeing her foster family, teenage orphan Jeanne (Clara Pacini) arrives at a town in the French Alps. It's midwinter, and the landscape is caked in snow. In the centre of town is an ice rink where Jeanne watches in admiration as an older girl skates with the grace of a ballerina. Jeanne will later adopt this girl's name, Bianca, having come across her discarded handbag and ID card.
Seeking shelter, Jeanne/Bianca sneaks into a building and beds down within its walls. The following morning she is woken by snowflakes falling inside the building. The snowflakes are artificial. Jeanne has fallen asleep in a film studio. The director (Gaspar Noé in a very unconvincing '70s wig) is shooting an adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson's 'The Snow Queen'. His leading lady is the beautiful and enigmatic Cristina (Marion Cotillard), known for her diva behaviour and temper tantrums.
When Jeanne is discovered, rather than getting kicked off the set she is set to work as an extra. Cristina takes a liking to her and promotes her to the role of stand-in for her young co-star Chloe (Lilas-Rose Gilberti). When Chloe is scarred by an accident involving a trained crow, Jeanne finds herself starring in the film.
Along with its direct referencing of Anderson's tale, The Ice Tower plays on the age old fairy tale setup of the evil queen preying on the innocent princess. Its gauzy fairy tale imagery masks an all too recognisable story of manipulation and abuse. Fascinated by Cristina, Jeanne is an easy target for this sophisticated, predatory older woman. Rather than the usual black outfit of fairy tale witches and other antagonists, Cristina is usually seen in her Snow Queen costume with a blond wig, giving her the appearance of a figurine you might see atop a Christmas tree.
As a tale of a young person being simultaneously seduced and terrorised by the darkness of the adult world, The Ice Tower alludes to David Lynch's Blue Velvet, with Jeanne hiding in a closet and observing her idol's darkest moments alone in a dressing room, where a sinister man fills her veins with heroin. There's something of Lynch's Mulholland Drive too, and Bergman's Persona, in how the child and the adult begin to resemble each other in their matching blond wigs. The off-season resort town, with its deserted hotel, is reminiscent of Harry Kumel's vampire classic Daughters of Darkness, and there's something decidedly vampiric about Cristina. We never see her in daylight, and when she finally attacks it's as though she is trying to draw the very lifeforce from her victim. The eternally youthful Cotillard is ideally cast as a woman who might be anywhere between 30 and 300 years old.
The very definition of a slow burn, The Ice Tower may test the patience of some viewers (there's a bad pun about "glacial" pacing to be made here). It has a dreamlike quality, and it might best be viewed late at night when you find yourself nodding off momentarily, drawing confusion between what you've seen and what you've imagined. The experience of watching The Ice Tower is like observing a pile of snow slowly melt away to reveal a buried corpse. There is no fairy tale ending here.
Directed by: Lucile Hadžihalilović
Starring: Clara Pacini, Marion Cotillard, August Diehl, Gaspar Noé
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