The Ice Tower at The Rex Berkhamsted

 

For  a single showing of The Ice Tower, the Rex was almost deserted. Maybe because this French film had little publicity. However, this month's Sight and Sound magazine has a long six page interview with the director Lucile Hadzihalilovic who also wrote the screenplay with Geoff Cox. The story is more inspired by rather than based on the Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale The Snow Queen. But I did not know anything about it when the film started, but I did became more and more anxious that things would turn out badly, especially in the last half hour. 

Marion Cotillard is the star of the movie as she plays Cristina, a famous actress trying to settle into the filming of The Snow Queen in a cold, dark, snowy  and isolated place in the mountains of France. But in fact the story revolves around young Jeanne played by Clara Pacini. The film starts in her foster home as she "escapes" to who knows where. A stop for the night in what looks like a dark, deserted warehouse, turns out to be a film set. She has found a purse with the ID of an older girl and with that finds a job as an extra on the movie. 

Here she meets Cristina and a kind of relationship is formed. They have some mutual history, and in the end, despite my fears of disaster, I thought this was one of the most satisfying conclusions of any film for a long time. Not everyone will like the ending, but I was glad I could guess the future for Jeanne. There is also one scene that I thought was brilliant. By this time Jeanne has a larger role and replaces an actress who is frightened of the larger black bird (a crow or jackdaw) which has to sit on her arm. The shot from behind as the bird sits there, waiting for Cristina to exit the ice tower, is quite memorable. 

As for the critics, Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian gave it five stars telling us it was a "mesmeric melodrama". A four star review by James Learoyd compared the film to Mulholland Drive, that also had two female leads, with a distinct feeling something was strange. Isaac Feldbergs review for Roger Ebert adds Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus "haunts the film and that there is "a masterclass by Cotillard". "This is not so much a film you watch as one you wake up from, shivering". Leigh Singer in December's Sight and Sound full page review says "Hadzihalilovic tends to prioritise tone and texture over narritive and dialogue and this glacially paced, coolly calibrated new work is no exception". 

So this is not a film for everyone, but it stays with you more than most.