Ledus tornis / Ледяная башня / The ice tower

 

 

This is the most visually astonishing movie so far to premiere at the 2025 Berlinale.
Marion Cotillard casts a spell in a shivery cinematic hypnosis in stylish dazzling and Strangely Mind-Numbing Fairy Tale.

 

The Ice Tower is a cinematic reverie sculpted in frost and longing, shimmering with melancholy and seduction. Set against the glacial backdrop of 1970s France, director conjures an elegant and elusive world, where reality melts into myth, and cinema casts its most dangerous spell
Jeanne, a lonely dreamer on the run, and she breaks into the cellar of a vast building which turns out to be a film studio. Jeanne stumbles into an a glittering kingdom of snow and silence – where fate entwines her with Cristina, a legendary actress of chilling beauty.

 

An atmosphere that chills to the bone fills the film pavilion: majestic snowdrifts glitter under the piercing beams of spotlights, and the Ice Tower shimmers through a veil of silvery mist.
Amidst these breathtaking decorations stands a mysterious screen diva – cold and flawless in a dazzling white gown and a crystal-studded crown that glints with every movement. Draped in a crystal-laced gown, crowned like a monarch of ice, Cristina (Marion Cotillard, mesmerizing) is the Snow Queen both on and off screen: distant, dazzling, and unknowable.

 

Drawn to the set like a moth to a flame, Jeanne is cast as Cristina’s double – a reflection, a shadow, an echo. What begins as admiration shifts into obsession, as the boundary between performance and possession begins to blur. Their fragile connection – fraught with unspoken tension and theatrical caprice – unfolds like a tale told in mirrors: beautiful, brittle, and edged with danger.
But what does Cristina want of Jeanne – and what can she want of Cristina? It is a mesmeric melodrama, mixing sensuality with a teetering anxiety, balancing on a cliff-edge of disaster.
But those wanting to be hypnotized by cinema, as this film really does put you in a state of trance, will enjoy a unique experience, ’70s film set production led by an enigmatic star.