LE MONDE'S REVIEW – MASTERPIECE

The visual delight offered by Lucile Hadzihalilovic's fourth feature film proves that the French director is a master of the image. Each of her films resembles a delicately poisoned fairy tale: young girls colliding with the walls of captivity (Innocence, 2004); a girl with a crystal jaw, forced to wear dental gear (Earwig, 2023); nurses performing strange treatments on boys (Evolution, 2015). Men rarely pull the strings in these dreamlike, subconscious worlds, but unforgettable visuals emerge – like the sight of a child emerging from a coffin, as if coming back to life, in Innocence.

An artist of radical gentleness, Hadzihalilovic, honored with a retrospective at the Cinémathèque Française from September 15 to 21, won the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution at the Berlin International Film Festival for La Tour de glace (The Ice Tower). Loosely inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, the story features two heroines who reflect each other: a teenage girl (Clara Pacini) fascinated by the immortal character from the fairy tale, and a film star (Marion Cotillard) playing the Queen, draped in immaculate costumes. A departure from the mainstream films she had been known for, Cotillard is elevated in a set of artificial mountains that shimmer like powdered sugar.

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