Lucile Hadžihalilović has always treated perception as an act of danger, and The Ice Tower continues that fascination. Loosely inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, the film reimagines the fairy tale through a poetic, existential frame.
For Jeanne, a 15-year-old orphan played with heartbreaking restraint by Clara Pacini, mirrors are not tools but traps, each reflection turning her reality inside out.
Set in an isolated mountain orphanage, Jeanne’s daily routine unfolds against an eerie quiet. The snow that covers every surface begins to feel more like a curtain than a comfort. Hadžihalilović uses this stillness to create unease.
Jeanne climbs the frozen mountains and stares at distant city lights as if measuring the distance between who she is and who she wishes to become. Her dreams fixate on an ice rink she glimpses from afar, a space shimmering with freedom and artistry, an image that becomes both her salvation and her undoing.
When she slips on a mountain slope and tumbles into a new life, it feels less like an accident and more like a surrender. She follows the glittering lights to the ice rink, where reality bends.
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There she encounters Bianca, an elegant skater performed by Valentina Vezzoso, whose grace fascinates Jeanne but whose cold refusal sends her wandering alone. That night, breaking into an abandoned shed, Jeanne dreams of a visit from the Snow Queen herself, played with spectral allure by Marion Cotillard.
From this point, the Ice Tower stops resembling a fairy tale and begins questioning how stories consume the women within them.
Between Fantasy and Film: The Duality of Jeanne
At its surface, Hadžihalilović’s film is a fantasy, but it soon folds upon itself. Jeanne wakes to discover that her magical encounter was part of a film shoot. The queen is not a queen but Cristina, an actress playing a role. This revelation splits the story open.
Jeanne, desperate for identity, slips into Bianca’s life by stealing her identification. When she presents herself to the film crew, they mistake her for the skater, and suddenly Jeanne becomes the person she has envied.
This act of self-reinvention is framed as both liberation and loss. Cristina welcomes her as something between a protégé and a shadow. Their relationship carries the tenderness of mentorship but the toxicity of control. Cotillard plays Cristina with a serene cruelty, beautiful, distant, and quietly manipulative.
Jeanne’s admiration turns into mimicry, and mimicry becomes annihilation of self. The film-within-a-film structure becomes a chilling commentary on how women’s identities are rewritten by the stories they are asked to perform.
Hadžihalilović’s storytelling refuses easy answers. Her pacing is deliberate, sometimes frustratingly so, reflecting the slow current of dreams. But every image invites contemplation.
Through Jonathan Ricquebourg’s cinematography, long corridors resemble frozen veins, half-lit mirrors appear like portals, and snowflakes drift softly across shot windows.
Jeanne peers through peepholes, screens, and panes, constantly watching but never seen. The repetition of these framed views comments on cinema itself, the gaze that defines who is visible and who remains invisible.
Olivier Messiaen’s haunting score deepens that mood with echoes that seem to breathe in the quiet. The music never overwhelms; instead, it slips beneath the surface, guiding the audience through Jeanne’s fragile awakening.
Each sound and silence builds toward a confrontation that barely arrives, because the truth Hadžihalilović seeks is not found in revelation but in reflection.
Identity, Art, and the Fear of Becoming Someone Else
At its emotional core, The Ice Tower examines how identity is performed, borrowed, and often stolen. Jeanne’s transformation into Bianca is not just a lie; it is an experiment in survival. Without family, she tests whether adopting another’s reflection can fill the void of belonging.
For Cristina, who lost her own childhood to ambition and fame, Jeanne becomes a mirror of her younger self. Both characters cling to illusions to escape pain.
This dynamic mirrors films such as Persona or 8½, yet Hadžihalilović avoids psychological acrobatics. She grounds the story in quiet human behavior: lingering glances, withheld words, and gestures that tremble between affection and harm.
The result feels intimate and distant all at once, capturing the paradox of looking too closely at oneself through another’s eyes.
The film also meditates on performance as an act of erasure. Jeanne’s every step toward becoming Bianca strips away a part of her original identity. Her imitation of elegance becomes a prison. The movie’s title, The Ice Tower, embodies that paradox, both majestic and isolating, built from fragile beauty that melts when touched.
By the final act, Jeanne has learned that mirrors can wound as much as they reveal. The set’s artificial decorations, glittering ice walls, and velvet blues, along with projected snow, mirror the emotional artifice of the industry itself.
Hadžihalilović suggests that filmmaking, like the fairy tales it adapts, can distort truth in the pursuit of beauty. Yet within that distortion lies an uncomfortable authenticity: our obsession with self-image often leads to losing the very self we seek to define.
A Beautifully Frozen Reflection on Self-Perception
The Ice Tower resists easy classification. It is part dream, part critique, and part coming-of-age tragedy. Its pace may feel glacial to some viewers, yet within each measured frame lies poetry.
The snow-covered stillness hides a storm of emotion. Jeanne is both a victim and creator of her illusions, and by the film’s final moments, it leaves us unsure whether she has woken from a dream or become part of someone else’s.
Hadžihalilović’s direction remains delicate but exacting. Her command of visual rhythm keeps the film mesmerizing even when the story stands nearly still.
Each reflection, each glance through glass, underscores her thematic obsession: the act of seeing as both discovery and danger. The narrative’s refusal to resolve mirrors the permanence of uncertainty in both youth and art.
What makes The Ice Tower memorable is not its mystery but its invitation to self-confrontation. Every viewer must decide whether Jeanne has found freedom or simply another form of enclosure. Perhaps both. Like a mirror clouded by frost, her image remains blurred, but for an instant, it flickers with truth.
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