When even a close-up studying the masterfully minute gesticulations of Marion Cotillard cannot awaken a film from its sleepwalking state, there’s a problem. Lucile Hadžihalilović’s “The Ice Tower” rambles about a dreamlike environment seeking life and lacking a pulse for two hours. Simply turning the frame over to let one of the great contemporary performers cook should be a no-brainer to inject some vitality into this leaden endeavor, but even Cotillard’s talents can’t thaw this turgid turd of an adult fairy tale. Guillermo del Toro, this is not.
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The issues start at the foundational level of “The Ice Tower.” The script, co-written by Hadžihalilović and frequent collaborator Geoff Cox, is too threadbare to hang an entire feature on. Their idea has about enough juice to power one of these short film exercises of pure directorial style funded by fashion houses like Miu Miu and Saint Laurent.
But plod along it does toward an extremely familiar voyage within a Hans Christian Andersen-inspired folklore. If the film has any virtue, it’s that Hadžihalilović manages to draw an impressively subdued performance out of her young star Clara Pacini. Child actors tend to externalize their every emotion, especially within a fantastical framework like the one offered here, but Pacini keeps everything held closely to her chest.
The film sets off Pacini’s 16-year-old Jeanne on her call to adventure by leaving the orphanage where she’d been deposited, but this parentless girl does not get the “Cinderella” story she might have imagined. Despite the film within “The Ice Tower” taking inspiration from Andersen’s fairy tale “The Snow Queen,” Hadžihalilović seems preoccupied with another heroine’s journey. Jeanne’s red overcoat, a vibrant primary color that pops against the pallid color palette of the film, renders her a ‘70s-era Little Red Riding Hood. Her disguised wolf is none other than Cristina Van Der Berg (Cotillard), the screen actress who beguiles her from first sight.
Cristina, conjuring all the regality of her Snow Queen archetype, catches the young girl peeping the action from Jeanne’s perch between the sets where she’s set up a temporary shelter. The star brings the stowaway into the project, not as an object of pity but as a potential protégé. It should be obvious what lies ahead with an actress who seems preternaturally attuned to playing a figure defined by her demand for loyalty-proving sacrifices. But just in case the ominous warning signs were not already written on the wall, the production design hangs a poster on the wall for Powell & Pressburger’s great tale of artistic agony “The Red Shoes.”
For a film that meanders at such a glacial pace, it’s surprising in retrospect to consider all the things “The Ice Tower” tries and fails to be. In addition to the aforementioned art-making parable, it sputters out as a backstage drama in the vein of “All About Eve” as Jeanne begins assuming a role of greater prominence on-screen in the production. Hadžihalilović also steers her film into Bergman-style psychodrama as the strange bond between Cristina and Jeanne solidifies around uncertain terms. It’s especially ill-equipped to handle this twist, considering how the chilly reserve of the film keeps viewers locked out of accessing any psychological connection with the characters.
“The Ice Tower” embraces the frigidity of its title to a fault. There’s nothing warm-blooded coursing through this film’s veins, and that drains all the emotion from the charged territory of fairy tales in favor of an ersatz experience. As it continues to skate in circles around an icy surface, it becomes readily apparent that Hadžihalilović’s take on the genre consists of nothing more than empty signifiers. She hangs the film so much on expectant gazes between her two leading ladies, but she provides the audience nothing with which they can fill them in.
Hadžihalilović misses a key feature of folkloric narratives that makes them resonate for children and adults of all ages. People relate to these stories not because they are outside the regular experience of life. Rather, they relate to fairy tales because they see how their symbolic codes ladder back to humanity. With nothing but artful austerity to offer as a tether back to reality, “The Ice Tower” shatters. [D]
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