Title: The Ice Tower
Foreign Title:
La Tour de Glace
Year: 2025
Country: France/Germany
Language: In French with English subtitles
Director: Lucile Hadzihalilovic
This surreal and moody film by director Lucile Hadzihhalilovic, set in the mountainous Hautes-Alpes region of France in 1973, takes on some of the markers of an old fashioned fairy tale. The wandering protagonist is without a strong parental connection, has acquired some magical protection, must avoid some challenges on the way and risks entrapment if they eat or drink while in fairy land.
The story opens with a restless 15 year old girl Jeanne, played by Clara Pacini, returning from her wanderings in the dark to a foster home. Later that night she reads her favourite fairy tale “The Snow Queen” to a youngster who has trouble sleeping. There is a warning in the story about the second kiss from the Snow Queen bringing death.
Motivated by a postcard from a former foster child, Jeanne collects her good luck beads and makes her way down the snowy road and on to an ice field. She slips, falls and hits her head and for a moment she loses her beads. She gets up (if she gets up), finds her beads and continues on to town, fending off a few challenges on her journey.
Needing shelter she breaks into a warehouse, losing a few more beads along the way. When she wakes (if she wakes) she discovers she is in a film studio which is making a film of her favourite fairy tale, the Snow Queen. When she sneaks into the studio’s food craft room to find food and eats, she meets the film’s wrangler.
Jeanne (now calling herself Bianca) slowly insinuates herself into the crew. She is quickly starstruck and befriended by the actress Cristina (Marion Cotillard) beautifully portraying the Snow Queen. Jeanne is painfully naive and compliant. Throughout the rest of the film Jeanne/Bianca wanders back and forth between reality of the set of the Snow Queen’s home, the “Ice Tower” and a surreal version of it.
The atmosphere of the film is dark and dreamy throughout, often obscuring detail. The moodiness and eeriness of the story is accomplished through the well-crafted cinematography of Jonathan Ricquebourg and the haunting Twilight Zone-esque soundscape. Jeanne’s fantasy world is often introduced with out-focussed points of light or prism-like camera shots.
The film closes as it opens, with fragmented and oblique views of the mountainous landscape as if shot through a shard of ice. Although each of the components ( acting, lighting, camera shots, music) are well done, the telling of the story loses out to it’s subtle allusions.
