Marion Cotillard on the Time Gaspar Noe Tried to Cast Her in a Horror Movie While Pregnant - and the Hardest Scene in Her New Movie 'The Ice Tower'

""Mulholland Drive" meets "Last Year at Marienbad" and the snow-flecked sagas of Hans Christian Andersen in French writer/director Lucile Hadžihalilović's coolly drawn, amorous, and elusive industry fairy tale, "The Ice Tower." In other words, an irresistible hypnosis for cinephiles."

"Hadžihalilović, the wife of director Gaspar Noé (who also stars in this movie), directs her ninth feature and first with Marion Cotillard in 20 years after the eventual Oscar winner's breakout movie "Innocence" in 2004. Cotillard here plays Cristina, a fading movie actress on set in the mountains of France, making an adaptation of "The Snow Queen.""

""The Ice Tower," which won a Silver Bear Award for Outstanding Artistic Contribution from Todd Haynes' 2025 Berlin International Film Festival jury, opens in select theaters this weekend and is a must-see for fans of hypnotic cinema, the theremin-like soundtrack and woozy, dream-tinged cinematography by Jonathan Ricquebourg putting the audience into a trance. Hadžihalilović, as she told IndieWire over a Zoom interview in September, doesn't mind if you nod off or fall asleep or get lost in the trance of the film."

The Ice Tower follows Cristina, a fading actress played by Marion Cotillard, on a mountain-set adaptation of The Snow Queen. A teenage runaway, Jeanne (Clara Pacini), flees an orphanage and joins the production, falling under Cristina's wing and developing a mutual obsession that evolves into a charged mother/daughter dynamic. The film blends fairy-tale elements with erotic frisson and dreamlike ambiguity, employing a theremin-like score and woozy, trance-inducing cinematography by Jonathan Ricquebourg. The film won a Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival and aims to blur the line between dream and reality.

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