A single frame—snowflakes drifting through half‑lit corridors—feels like a whispered invitation into a waking dream. In The Ice Tower, Lucile Hadžihalilović deepens her exploration of how images can speak louder than dialogue, guiding us through a story that feels both timeless and unsettling.
Directed by Hadžihalilović and starring newcomer Clara Pacini alongside Marion Cotillard, this 2025 Berlinale entry unfolds in a remote 1970s Alpine foster home. Jeanne (Pacini), a teenager yearning for something beyond the graying walls and endless chores, seizes a moment of freedom at a nearby ice rink. There, she borrows another girl’s identity—“Bianca”—and tumbles onto the set of The Snow Queen, a frost‑tipped film whose lead, Cristina Van Der Berg (Cotillard), exerts an almost magnetic pull.
From its opening tableau to the gradual unspooling of Jeanne’s dual personas, the film‑within‑a‑film structure underlines Hadžihalilović’s fascination with the porous boundary between reality and artifice. Surreal tableaux of glittering sets and fog‑cloaked forests weave through moments of quiet dread, sketching a fairy‑tale atmosphere where innocence and danger coexist.
The Ice Tower emerges as a hypnotic study of identity at the edge of fantasy—an invitation to examine how the stories we inhabit can transform us, for better or worse.
Mapping the Story’s Crystal Framework
Hadžihalilović opens in a snow‑choked Alpine care home circa 1970, where worn wallpaper and echoing hallways evoke post‑war austerity. Outside, powdered peaks gleam under pale sunlight; inside, cramped dormitories offer only fleeting warmth. This contrast—icy exteriors and lantern‑lit interiors—establishes both Jeanne’s physical confinement and the visual poetry that defines the film’s world.
Each morning, Jeanne follows a rigid routine: fetching water, preparing porridge, and watching the same grey landscape. Her yearning reaches a peak when she lingers at a nearby ice rink, marveling at skaters cutting through frozen glass. That moment of borrowed freedom, bright and sharp, flips the narrative switch from stasis to motion.
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After meeting a skater named Bianca, Jeanne assumes her name like a costume. This act isn’t mere disguise—it ignites agency. “Bianca” strides beyond the orphanage’s gates, and with each choice, her original self recedes. The new persona drives every subsequent choice, reshaping audience expectations about who Jeanne really is and what she might become.
Jeanne/Bianca stumbles onto the set of The Snow Queen, where Marion Cotillard’s Cristina Van Der Berg reigns supreme under Dino’s direction (Gaspar Noé). Here, Hadžihalilović layers stories: the 1970s tale bleeds into the fairy‑tale shoot. Every camera crease and boom‑mic shadow underscores how fiction can both reveal and obscure truth. The device feels fresh at this scale—more immersive than a casual homage, yet never so elaborate that it distracts from Jeanne’s arc.
As an extra, Jeanne gradually earns Cristina’s attention, moving from background presence to intimate confidante. The boundary between performer and spectator thins. Tension builds in measured beats: an exchanged glance here, a whispered direction there. The pivotal scene—when Jeanne’s two worlds collide under a single, flickering light—comes without fanfare but with a jolt, signaling a shift from cautious exploration to irreversible transformation.
Reflections in Frost: Themes & Motifs
In The Ice Tower, Jeanne’s childlike wonder collides with the world of adults in a way that feels less like a fairy‑tale cautionary tale and more like a cold jolt to the system. Her sheltered life in a rundown orphanage leaves her vulnerable to the seductive darkness of Cristina’s world—where temper tantrums are quelled with injections, and a director’s casual cruelty can loom larger than any ice queen’s glare. That tension between innocence and corruption drives every scene, reminding us that coming of age can be a slippery slope.
This doubling of Jeanne and her alter ego “Bianca” plays out as mirror‑image symbolism: the girl who scrubs floors versus the girl who steps onto a soundstage. One reflection is reality, the other performance, and Hadžihalilović exploits that split to ask whether identity is something we wear or something we become. When Jeanne dons Bianca’s skates, it isn’t just a costume change—it’s an act of psychic escape.
And speaking of escape, the film’s dream logic blurs the line between waking and imagined worlds. A corridor might stretch into a glacier; a studio light can feel like the midday sun on a secret kingdom. These tonal shifts mirror a broader trend in modern art‑house storytelling, where surreal sequences aren’t mere ornaments but narrative engines that carry a character’s inner life onto the screen.
At the heart of this frozen rite of passage is a strange mentorship. Cristina, part ice monarch and part wayward guardian, exerts a pull that’s part fascination, part exploitation. Their bond echoes old fairy‑tale archetypes—the Snow Queen’s aloof majesty versus the Wicked Witch’s whispered promises—yet it also taps into today’s conversations about female power, influence, and the cost of idolization.
Finally, Jeanne’s hunger for connection—born from years of isolation—underscores every choice she makes. Abandoned by her caregivers, she chases belonging in the only realm she can imagine: one ruled by dazzling spectacle and whispered lies. That yearning lends her journey real emotional heft, transforming an art‑film puzzle into a portrait of loneliness that lingers long after the screen goes dark.
Crafting the Frozen Frame
Lucile Hadžihalilović has built a body of work around elemental, dream‑steeped imagery, and here she refines those instincts into a crystalline language. Her previous films hinted at this sort of hypnotic precision, but The Ice Tower places it front and center, mapping psychological terrain through carefully composed visuals.
The film unfolds at a deliberate pace. Extended silent passages—Jeanne’s solitary trek across snowfields, the hush of a soundstage at dawn—invite immersion rather than impatience. These sequences feel like cinematic breathing exercises, each held breath deepening the sense of isolation. At moments, the rhythm verges on languorous, which will test some viewers’ attention, yet it also cements the trance‑like mood essential to the narrative’s thematic core.
Visually, Hadžihalilović leans into surreal tableaux. A hallway light splits into prismatic shards; shadows of skates on ice fragment across walls. Dialogue is sparse, allowing shadows and textures to carry emotional weight in the manner of silent‑era masterpieces. When characters do speak, their words land with sudden gravity, as if interrupting a dream state.
The director peppers the film with nods to classic fairy tales. Andersen’s Snow Queen isn’t just source material—it’s echoed in costume design, mirrored corridors, even the glassy stare of an extra. A fleeting shot of a yellow‑brick‑toned interior hints at The Wizard of Oz, reminding us that escape often circles back to self‑discovery.
Finally, self‑referential flourishes—boom mics casting long shadows across actors’ faces, glimpses of script pages—underscore the film’s meditation on artifice. By turning the filmmaking process into part of its own mythology, The Ice Tower invites us to consider how stories shape us even as we think we’re watching them unfold.
Embodying the Ice: Performances & Characters
Clara Pacini carries Jeanne’s transformation with a remarkable blend of wide‑eyed wonder and tentative resolve. In early scenes, her eyes flicker with the cautious curiosity of someone who’s scarcely seen beyond dormitory walls. As she becomes “Bianca,” Pacini’s posture shifts—shoulders square, step measured—suggesting a fledgling confidence that never feels forced. Her evolution from sheltered orphan to daring participant unfolds in small gestures: the way she pauses before a camera, the tremor in her voice when she borrows another girl’s identity.
Marion Cotillard approaches Cristina Van Der Berg like a statue come to life, each movement calibrated for maximum effect. There’s an elegance in her stillness, but cracks form when her diva façade falters—an offhand glance or a sudden flinch hint at the vulnerability beneath. Cotillard’s aura alternates between magnetism and menace, so that every shared frame with Pacini becomes a silent power play rather than a conventional mentor‑pupil exchange.
Supporting roles add textured depth. Gaspar Noé’s Dino slips between playful cynic and mild tyrant, reminding us that filmmakers can be as unforgiving as any monarch. August Diehl’s doctor hovers at the edge of sympathy, his impassive injections raising more questions than answers. And young Rose (Cassandre Louis Urbain) anchors Jeanne’s emotional stakes—her presence a quiet reminder of the real bonds the protagonist leaves behind.
Painting in Ice: Cinematic Design & Soundscapes
Jonathan Ricquebourg’s lens drapes the film in alternating palettes of cobalt frost and tarnished gold. These color shifts map Jeanne’s emotional terrain: the ice‑bleached exteriors underscore her isolation; the amber‑lit interiors recall a post‑1960s warmth tinged with regret. Extended wide shots—of an orphanage façade or a wind‑tossed clearing—linger long enough to feel lived‑in. When the camera finally cuts to a close‑up, a tremor on Clara Pacini’s breath against frosted glass pierces both frame and viewer alike.
Production design leans into 1970s verisimilitude. Furry collars, vinyl lamps and chipped linoleum anchor the fairy tale in domestic grit. Then there are the soundstage sets: an ice tower fashioned from painted plywood feels simultaneously enchanting and cage‑like, amplifying Jeanne’s sense of being trapped within a story she’s only just begun to tell.
In an age of score‑heavy soundtracks, The Ice Tower opts for disciplined silence. Sparse dialogue dissolves into the hiss of wind and distant scrape of skate blades. Composer Olivier Mellano’s use of the ondes Martenot—its theremin‑like wail—threads the film with a hypnotic pulse. The result is a soundscape that seeps into your marrow, reminding us that sometimes absence of speech can speak volumes.
Reflections in Crystal: Symbolism & Meaning
The film drapes ice and snow over its narrative like a second skin, using frosted landscapes to explore purity that can freeze rather than heal. Jeanne’s trek through blizzard‑white fields reads as both initiation and indictment—beauty that wounds, invitation that traps. The eponymous tower itself stands as dual shelter and snare: a glistening refuge promising transformation, yet its walls echo with isolation.
Mirrors and reflections recur with quiet insistence. Jeanne’s widening eyes fix on Cristina’s frozen countenance, as if each glance carves a new shard of identity. That reflected gaze becomes a form of self‑discovery that edges toward self‑destruction: the more Jeanne sees herself in the diva, the more she risks losing what remained of her innocence. In this world, a mirror isn’t just a tool for vanity—it’s a threshold to another self.
Here, cinema functions as its own fairy tale engine. The soundstage’s make‑believe snow and painted backdrops underscore storytelling’s slippery promises: an escape hatch that can slip shut without warning. Through every crafted illusion, Hadžihalilović reminds us that artifice can both liberate and isolate—offering a story we can inhabit, only to find its contours closing in once the lights go down.
Full Credits
Director: Lucile Hadžihalilović
Writers: Lucile Hadžihalilović, Geoff Cox
Producers: Muriel Merlin, Ingmar Trost
Cast: Marion Cotillard (Cristina / The Snow Queen), Clara Pacini (Jeanne / Bianca), August Diehl (Max), Gaspar Noé (Dino), Marine Gesbert (Stéphanie), Lilas-Rose Gilberti Poisot, Dounia Sichov, Raphael Reboul, Wilhelm Bonnelle
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Jonathan Ricquebourg
Editor: Nassim Gordji Tehrani
The Review
The Ice Tower
The Ice Tower transforms elemental imagery and elliptical narrative into an immersive, unsettling journey through identity and artifice. While its deliberate pace and sparse dialogue may test patience, Clara Pacini’s quiet vulnerability and Marion Cotillard’s frosty magnetism ensure the film’s dreamlike power resonates long after viewing.
PROS
- Hypnotic visuals that convey emotion without spoken lines
- Clara Pacini’s performance charts Jeanne’s growth with subtlety
- Marion Cotillard balances regal poise and hidden vulnerability
- Dreamlike atmosphere bolstered by deliberate pacing and sound design
CONS
- Measured pace may feel sluggish for those craving momentum
- Sparse dialogue leaves some narrative threads open
- Surrealist leanings can distance viewers seeking straightforward clarity
- Nearly two‑hour runtime tests patience for minimalist storytelling
