A film set is no place for little girls. In the fairy-tale-adjacent world of Lucile Hadžihalilović’s frigid dark fantasy “The Ice Tower,” an orphan runs away from her foster home and takes refuge in the basement of a movie studio, finding herself drawn to the production — and its star, played by Marion Cotillard — the way a child in a Hans Christian Andersen story might be lured into the clutches of a wicked enchantress. Aptly enough, the script they’re shooting is “The Snow Queen,” aspects of which echo through the movie’s many layers, all the way out to us, whom Hadžihalilović hopes to trap in her crystal prism.
Cotillard and Hadžihalilović collaborated once before, early in both their careers, on 2004’s “Innocence,” where the director first planted the unholy seeds she’s still harvesting all these years later: unsettling yet artful projects in which Hadžihalilović depicts the socialization of children according to macabre rituals only their elders seem to understand. In “Evolution,” she showed boys groomed to bear children, while in “Earwig,” a sinister guardian installed a set of frozen dentures in a girl’s mouth, at the express instruction of a faraway sponsor.
At once dazzling and dull, “The Ice Tower” breaks from this pattern in that we meet young Jeanne (Clara Pacini) the day before she manages to escape her foster home, after which, it’ll be her decision how she chooses to exercise her freedom. Until now, she’s been confined to an overcrowded cabin somewhere high in the Alps, cut off from the big city and practically all impact of pop culture. Celebrity can be as alluring as royalty to someone who grew up eating gruel in the hinterlands, though such concepts must be imparted somehow.
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Jeanne knows “The Snow Queen” by heart, but has she ever seen a movie in her life? Is she starstruck when she comes face to face with Cristina Van Der Berg (whom Cotillard plays as an austere Marlene Dietrich-like diva), or does her naivete collapse the incredible distance society places between the value of these two people? It’s most unlike Hadžihalilović to skimp on the details of how Jeanne was raised. And yet, it would help to know if she’s drawn like a moth to the flickering light of the film projector, or if it was mere coincidence that she stumbled upon this strange form of modern sorcery.
In any case, it’s no surprise to see cinema cast a spell on a child who could well be an autobiographical young stand-in for the director (while the person playing the director of “The Snow Queen” in the film is none other than Hadžihalilović’s husband, Gaspar Noé). But given that “The Ice Tower” is set in the ’70s (when certain filmmakers were famously trying to seduce minors), it might actually have made more sense for all of this to happen around rehearsals for an in-person play. Here I am trying to impose logic on the French director’s hallucinatory and largely sensory-based style, which minimizes dialogue and embraces the dream-like poetry of David Lynch movies, in which associations are more important than answers.
As played by Pacini, Jeanne avidly studies all the unfamiliar sights around her through brown eyes so big, they look almost animal-like. Her innocence — to return to that word — is her greatest asset. And yet, she’s savvy enough to navigate certain tricky situations. Jeanne knows better than to trust the man who offers her a ride down the mountain, and she understands the significance of something far from clear in the film, when a “doctor” (August Diehl) comes in to administer an injection to the star after one of her tantrums. What’s in the syringe? Is Cristina what celebrity gossip rags once called a “dope fiend”?
As a screen presence, Cotillard typically radiates sensitivity (it can be almost too much for her detractors, but is often her greatest asset, in projects like “Two Days, One Night”). So it’s odd to cast her as someone so glacial and distant, since that runs counter to her natural energy — though it’s the only mode that interests Hadžihalilović, whose films feel like the psychic equivalent of a cold plunge. Cristina calls for an Eva Green or Angelina Jolie type, whereas one smile from Cotillard could melt the entire illusion. And yet, she commits, seeing it through to the film’s deeply upsetting finale, where Cristina attempts to corrupt this girl in whom she’d seen a younger version of herself.
By this time, Hadžihalilović is using another of her signature tricks, drawing things out until the audience feels practically anaesthetized. In “Eargwig,” she lulled us into a suspended state of almost-slumber with a long, monotonous train ride, and here, the tinkling score, the sparkling lights and the prismatic motif (cast by a crystal ornament snatched from Cristina’s costume) all serve to hypnotize. It can start to feel quite tedious, unless you allow your brain to engage with the movie on an almost subconscious level. That’s where the incredible attention paid to crafts — the cinematography, sets, costumes and sound design — kick in at last, and “The Ice Tower” becomes a sort of reverie.
To reference another film premiering alongside this one in competition at the Berlinale: Hadžihalilović dangles a dead diamond in which we just might see ourselves reflected.