The Ice Tower (França, Alemanha e Itália, 2025)
Original title: La Tour de Glace
Director: Lucile Hadžihalilović
Screenplay: Geoff Cox, Lucile Hadžihalilović and Alante Kavaite
Main cast: Marion Cotillard, Gaspar Noé, August Diehl, Clara Pacini, Lila-Rose Gilberti, Dounia Sichov and Carmen Haidacher
Running: 118 minutes
The story of the Ice Queen isn’t one of the best-known fairy tales in Brazil, but it’s based on the same theme as all stories of the genre: the fight between good and evil and the victory of a little girl’s good deeds against an evil queen, all in the name of love. And it’s based in this story that Lucile Hadžihalilović began to draw inspiration to write the script for what would later become La Tour de Glace.
The adaptation is made with Jeane (Clara Pacini), the orphan girl who actually falls in love with the Ice Queen after telling the story to another girl in her orphanage so many times. Then, also motivated by an older girl who has already left the orphanage, she decides to run away to the big city. Her orphanage is in an unspecified region, but it reminds us of the French Alps, really in the middle of the immensity of snow and mountains, and she leaves for the nearest small town. In this escape, the director manages to make us feel the mix of feelings that we will spend the entire work reflecting: excitement at the discovery of new things mixed with the distress of seeing such a young girl fending for herself and fear of the world around her. When she finally manages to find a place to hide, we discover that this is in fact a film set where an adaptation of the Ice Queen’s fairy tale is being filmed, with Cristina (Marion Cotillard) playing the Queen.
There are many elements of photography and art direction that work perfectly to give the entire story that desired fairy tale feel. For example, all the outdoor scenes have a bluish filter that’s repeated in most of the moments in which Cristina is, while the indoor or more affectionate scenes use warmer lighting. The care and detail with which the Queen’s costume is treated also shows a great concern for aesthetic details, essential for the narrative to work.
Even with the extremely high aesthetic quality, there are many difficulties for the audience to connect with the events on screen. Since it doesn’t care about creating depth in the characters, it ends up depending a lot on the connection created between them. There’s a lot of play on the scene between sort-of-muse and creator who are simultaneously villain and heroine, but we never have enough elements to uncover the real intentions of either party. Even though we exit the screening with the feeling that there was an important message being conveyed about the desire for eternal youth and the complexity of relationships between women, often bordering on homoeroticism, it also seems that we can’t absorb it because of the layers that the work itself places on it for understanding.
There’s a mix of references, sometimes flirting with symbolic mysticism, sometimes with scenes that threaten to go into terror, which makes its core confusing. And, confused, the viewers can’t connect with the work and enjoy it, especially with the slow pace imposed on the acting and the plot’s events.
It’s possible that a second viewing of the film would be beneficial to the viewer, but unfortunately, as a standalone work, seen once, it lacks the elements to be able to appreciate it.
