‘Reflection in a Dead Diamond’ Review: While James Bond Awaits a Reboot, French Pair Pay Eye-Popping Homage to His ’60s-Era Imitators

variety.com:

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic If a picture is worth a thousand words, then every shot in Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani’s cine-kaleidoscopic “Reflection in a Dead Diamond” is worth its weight in cubic zirconia.

The latest eyegasm from the French couple behind “The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears” continues their pop-art worship of guilty-pleasure ’60s cult cinema.

This time, their primary inspiration are fumetti neri, the Italian pulp comics that launched the masked Diabolik character and a stylish (if schlocky) subgenre of crime and adventure films — mostly James Bond knockoffs with giallo-vivid visuals. “Reflection” wonders how a life of world-saving exploits, as chronicled in cinema and comics, might look in the rearview mirror, as a Bond-like secret agent stares out at the sea and watches his life flash before him.

The answer: Objects are much closer than they appear, but also splintered like so much broken glass. In just the second shot of the film, Italian actor Fabio Testi’s eyes fill the ultra-wide aspect ratio — an introduction even more dramatic (but less impactful, without proper setup or suspense) than Charles Bronson’s first appearance, gazing up from his harmonica, in “Once Upon a Time in the West.” Sergio Leone was a better director than the guys who made most of these movies (although genre legend Mario Bava’s 1968 “Danger: Diabolik” remains a mod delight), but it’s the entire movement’s graphically bold mise-en-scène that tickles Cattet and Forzani.