The Ice Tower

The director’s formal control, from the eerie electronic sounds of an ondes Martenot to the startling image of blood flowering across ice, collides the cinematic and the liminal.

It is a mesmeric melodrama, mixing sensuality with a teetering anxiety, balancing on a cliff-edge of disaster.

Hadzihalilovic is a director who refuses to compromise her very distinctive vision and that is the case here, even if The Ice Tower, which bows in Berlin Competition, is her biggest film to date; utterly beautiful in every frame with a breakout lead performance by young French actress Clara Pacini.

The Ice Tower is a beautifully crafted coming-of-age story that casts a hypnotic spell, expertly blending cinema and fairytale to captivating effect.

The Ice Tower is, ultimately, an aesthetic and nostalgic exercise.

The Ice Tower doesn’t grip you as much as it asks you to gaze at its hazy, nightmarish imagery, and either fall under its sway — or not.

With nothing but artful austerity to offer as a tether back to reality, The Ice Tower shatters.