Marion Cotillard and Lucile Hadžihalilović Salute Actors and Artifice in Fractured Fairy Tale ‘The Ice Tower’

variety.com:

Ben Croll Two decades after their last collaboration, Marion Cotillard reunites with filmmaker Lucile Hadžihalilović for “The Ice Tower,” a fractured fable that lifts as much from the work of Hans Christian Andersen as from Hadžihalilović’s formative years.

Premiering in competition at the Berlin Film Festival, the 1970s-set film follows a young orphan who falls into an hypnotic — and soon reciprocated — obsession with a film star shooting an adaptation of Andersen’s “The Snow Queen.” “All my films are fairy-tales,” says Hadžihalilović. “I don’t care to situate my stories in an everyday reality or a contemporary timeframe; whereas the storybook form comes naturally, allowing for poetry and escape.” Cotillard, of course, plays that regal film star — “a cold, cold woman,” per the director — who doubles as a vision of glamour and a taste of something altogether more acrid.

And after working together on 2004’s “Innocence,” Hadzihalilović now wanted to give her star the chance to play some unfamiliar notes. “[Marion] can evoke a terrific amount of fear,” says the filmmaker. “Only I have rarely seen her given that kind of role.

She exudes something both sensual and distant, connecting a modern way of acting with a face and aura that feels timeless. And she connects me to the kind of cinema I love.” Indeed, “The Ice Tower” is very much about cinephilia.