La Tour de Glace
A 15-year-old orphan, witnesses the shoot for a film adaptation of the fairy tale ‘The Snow Queen’, and she becomes fascinated by its star, an actress who is just as mysterious and alluring as the Queen she is playing.
Jeanne (Clara Pacini) is a teenage girl living in a foster home in 1970’s France. One day she runs away, breaks into a nearby film soundstage to sleep overnight, and she somehow gets a job as an extra. She is astonished to realise what story is being filmed - Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Snow Queen’, a story she has long been fascinated with. It is here that her urchin-like prettiness and air of demurely sensitive adoration for the queen catches Cristina’s (Marion Cotillard) eye, the enigmatic diva-ish star of the film. A mutual fascination grows between the actress and the girl. Sequences in the film let us drift as if in a dream. It is a mesmeric melodrama, mixing sensuality with a teetering anxiety, balancing on a cliff-edge of disaster. (Subtitles)
France/Germany 2025 Lucile Hadzihalilovic 117m
