Lucile Hadžihalilović has been making films like The Ice Tower ever since her feature debut, 2004’s Innocence, an allegorical semi-fairytale in which a young Marion Cotillard played a pivotal role in a story that wasn’t about her character at all.
Same here – Cotillard pivotal, playing Cristina, an actress in a very non-specific 1970s whose latest role, as Hans Christian Andersen’s Ice Queen, gets her caught up with a young runaway hiding out in the studio where the film is being shot. Mistaken for an extra, Jeanne (Clara Pacini) is gradually wound into the movie itself, into the life of Cristina and into the world of the Ice Queen.
Hadžihalilović slides about between these different realms – “reality” (as depicted in a movie), acting and pure fantasy – as the emotionally vulnerable orphan is captivated by the lure of… where shall we start? Somewhere warm? Something secure? A dream job as an extra and later a bit part player? A role in the life of a famous person? The seductions of the fairy tale itself, in which a chilly sovereign’s malign spell is undone by the power of love? Any or all of these are in play at any one time, and it isn’t always certain which it is.
There’s a glimpse of a French poster for Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes at one point. It’s one of Hadžihalilović’s favourite films and its central ideas – sacrifice for art and the slippage between reality and fantasy – are also in play here. But most of all this is another tale of Foucauldian discipline and the schooling of the young person – most obvious in Innocence but a thread through all of Hadžihalilović’s films. Here, Jeanne learns how to be a woman, not from a mother, who is dead, but from a frigid and detached actress, all but an Ice Queen in her diva-like everyday life.
It’s one of the stereotypes of womanhood, the frigid grand dame, but Cotillard’s performance mixes in another one – the highly strung actress – offering Jeanne (who’s pretending to be a girl from the village called Bianca – more slippage) a choice of two role models. Is it any wonder women turn out the way they do, Hadžihalilović seems to be saying, when they have so few alternatives to choose from?
The same idea propelled Innocence and it seemed more on point 20 years ago. But there’s no denying that Hadžihalilović has the scent in her nostrils and an eye on its aesthetic possibilities.
Nice to see Gaspar Noé in a role in one of his wife’s films. The two have collaborated extensively over the years – she co-wrote Enter the Void with him for example. Here he takes a role, as the film-within-the-film’s director (in a wig, at his insistence). It is a cool and unshowy performance in keeping with much of the film. Jeanne Ricquebourg’s lighting is soft, highly filtered and otherworldly, all very fairytale-esque. The same goes for the musical elements – Messiaen features prominently – of twinkles and shimmers.
Pacini you probably won’t know – one short is all she had on the IMDb before this – but hers is a starmaking performance. She’s both enigmatic and magnetic, vulnerable without being meek, and holds up against Cotillard, who can act anyone off the screen without doing very much at all.
Hadžihalilović makes arthouse films, almost as a dare it sometimes seems, and that’s what this unimpeachably is. But it’s also a rather cute and simple story of a young woman trying to survive in the big bad world and an older woman who’s been made big and bad by it. There is a grim but elegant symmetry.
The Ice Tower – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
